Introduction

• Public Policy making can be considered to be a set of processes, including

1. Agenda setting
2. Policy formulation
3. Policy adoption
4. Policy implementation
5. Policy evaluation (Kingdon, 2003).
• This lecture presents on the first process; the agenda setting
Agenda
Kingdon (2003) has defined the agenda as the list of subjects or problems to which
governmental officials, and people outside of government closely associated with those officials,
are paying some serious attention at any given time.
• An agenda is a collection of problems, understandings of causes, symbols, solutions, and
other elements of public problems that come to the attention of members of the public and
their governmental officials.
• Agendas exist at all levels of government. Every community and every body of government
has a collection of issues that are available for discussion and disposition.
✓What is agenda setting?
• The agenda setting is the process or behavior to adopt social issue or problem as a policy
problem; in the process, social issue or problem is chosen as a governmental issue
• Agenda setting is the process by which problems and alternative solutions gain or lose public
and elite attention.
Agenda setting
• Group competition to set the agenda is fierce because no society or political system has the
institutional capacity to address all possible alternatives to all possible problems that arise at
any one time.
• Groups must therefore fight to earn their issues’ places among all the other issues sharing
the limited space on the agenda or to prepare for the time when a crisis makes their issue
more likely to occupy a more prominent space on the agenda
• Because the agenda is finite, interests must compete with each other to get their issues and
their preferred alternative policies, on the agenda.
• They must also compete with each other to keep their issues off the agenda, using the power
resources at their disposal.
Levels of agenda
• Institutional agenda – the list of items explicitly up for the active and serious
consideration of authoritative decision- makers.
• Decision agenda – items about to be acted on by a governmental body.
Levels of agenda setting
• Agenda universe – all ideas that could possibly be brought up and discussed in a
society or a political system.
• Systemic agenda – all issues that are commonly perceived by members of the
political community as meriting public attention and as involving matters within the
legitimate jurisdiction of existing governmental authority.
Types of agenda
Rogers and Dearing (1988) identify three types of agenda setting:
• Public agenda setting, in which the public’s agenda is the dependent variable (the traditional
hypothesis)
• Media agenda setting, in which the media’s agenda is treated as the dependent variable
(aka agenda building)
• Policy agenda setting, in which elite policy makers’ agendas are treated as the dependent
variable. It is some times called political agenda setting
Actors involved in policy agenda
• Political administrative officials such as Prime Minister and other Ministers such as
Minister of finance,
• Legislators,
• Academicians
• The Media as well as the Public
Kingdon model: how an issue get on the political agenda?
• Three steams
• A problem steam; marked by systematic indicators of problem by a sudden crises, or by
a feedback that is not working as intended-the issue get on agenda
• Policy stream; relate to those policy actors and communities who attach their
solutions( policies) to emerging problems. This concept also relate to the actual policy
being promoted
• C) political steam; this consists of the public mood, pressure group campaigns, elections
results, partisan or ideological distribution etc Other factors????
History of Agenda Setting:
• Originated in Walter Lippmann's classics, Public opinion (1922)
• Establishes the principal connection b/w worlds events and the image in the public
mind.
• Agenda-building is defined as “a process through which the policy agendas of political
elites are influenced by a variety of factors, including media agendas and public
agendas” (Rogers & Dearing, 1988).
• Elite categories who building and promoting policy are called agenda building.
•Government Issues give the first priority in agenda building.
What does mean by agenda Building?
To determine all those factors that shape media agenda and subsequently public agenda
in a broader context or in other words, understanding factors at macro level.
What is Public Agenda?
• The public agenda consists of the issues the general public views as most important at a
particular time.
• Issues rank as important by public is called Public Agenda.

What is Policy Agenda?

• The policy agenda refers to the issues that head the priority list of political leaders.
• Issues under considered by powerful Elites are called Policy Agenda.
How media agenda shape policy agenda?
Relying on the findings of David Protess and his colleagues (1991), Professor Perloff says
that policy makers cannot focus all issues; they just focus one or two main due to
excessive media coverage or in other words media agenda.
Media, Public and Policy Agendas:
It is a complex relationship-such as it is itself political to decide that which issue should
be media agenda or public agenda so that it could finally be policy agenda. Many factors
influence media and its decisions regarding selection of a problem.
Three spheres of media:
According to Daniel C. Hallin (1986), news media coverage can be divided into three
distinct ideological spheres: the sphere of legitimate controversy, the sphere of
consensus, and the sphere of deviance.