AGENDA-SETTING:

WHAT SORT OF ISSUES BECOME POLITICAL

PROBLEMS?
Prepared by : Carolina Galiotti, Lidia Sandoval, Saul Guerrero
Policy Cycle
Agenda Setting
Formulation
Decision-
Making
Implementation
Evaluation
( Howlett , 2009)
Agenda Setting
Governmental agenda: a list of subjects or problems to which
governmental official and those close to them are paying serious
attention
Agenda setting process: Is about the recognition of some subject
as a problem requiring further government attention

Non-cyclical
Critical stage
Decisive


(Baumgartner and John, 2005 in Howlett et al, 2009)
Issue attention cycle
Rooted in:
Nature of certain domestic problems
Media news cycle

Problems suddenly leaps into prominence, remains there for a short
time, and then gradually fades from the center of public attention.



(Downs,1972)

Window of
opportunity
Policy
Problem
Politics
Kingdons Model
When does an issue become a problem?
Conflict with prevailing values
Placement under different categories
Crisis or Focusing event
Problem
Recognition
Criteria:
Technically feasible
Acceptable budgetary cost
Acceptable to the mass publics
Policy Stream
of proposal
relates to changes in administration, shifts in partisan or
ideological balances in congress, shifts in national mood,
partisan realignments, or interest group pressures.
Political
Stream
Streams: Problems, Proposals, and Politics
Joining of the Streams
Independancy
Not linear
Special moment: Window of opportunity


a problem is recognized, a solution is available and the political
conditions are right

The Policy Window
Are opportunities that open and close based on the dynamic
interaction of political institutions, policy actors, and the
articulation of ideas in the form of proposed policy solutions.
(Howlett,2009)
Windows
Open
Close
4 Windows types
Routinized
political
Institutionalized
events
Discretionary
political
Behaviour of individual
political actor
Spillover
problem
Random
problems
Related issues drawn
in open windows
Random events or
crises



Windows can be designed to stay closed for extended periods:

Multi-year founding authorizations.
Military programs.
Fiscal devises



Policy Monopoly
Mechanism that provides stability in agenda setting.

A subsystem that entrenches the basic idea set, many of the actors, and the
institutional order in which policy development occurs, locking in a policy
discourse.

Attempting to construct Hegemonic images of policy problems that allow
influential actors in a subsystem to practice agenda denial, preventing
alternate images and ideas to penetrate and influence governments.

(Howlett et al. , 2009)