Agenda Building as a Comparative Political Process

Abstract

Agenda building is the process through which demands of various groups in a population are translated into issues which vie for the attention of decision makers (formal agenda) and/or the public (public agenda). This paper presents three models for the comparative study of agenda building. The outside initiative model describes groups with minimal prior access to decision makers, who must consequently first expand their issues to a public agenda before they can hope to reach the formal agenda. The mobilization model accounts for issues which are placed on the formal agenda by political leaders, who subsequently attempt to expand these issues to the public agenda to obtain the support required for implementation. The inside access model refers to leaders, or to those having close contact with these leaders, who seek to place issues on the formal agenda directly, and for whom expansion to the public agenda is both unnecessary and undesirable.Propositions are stated about intergroup variation in patterns of agenda building within societies; about variations in success rates for different strategies and probabilities of occurrence for the three models in different types of societies; and about characteristics of the agenda-building process which hold in all three models and in any social setting.

Civil Society Organizations, Advocacy, and Policy Making in Latin American Democracies

“…Scholars typically distinguish the public agenda, which includes highly visible issues, from the formal agenda, the smaller list of items that government officials have selected for "serious consideration" (Cobb, Ross, and Ross 1976; see also Kingdon 1995). Although group members aspire to influence both agendas, I focus mainly on the formal agenda-setting phase.…”

“…Some of the CSOs examined in this project were established under periods of authoritarian rule (1976-1983in Argentina, 1973in Chile, and 1973-1985 in Uruguay); others were created following the re-emergence of democracy in all three countries. The Argentine armed forces waged a "Dirty War" against internal subversion that became notorious for its heavy casualties and widespread use of torture and forced disappearance.…”

Influencing Forces or Mere Interview Sources? How Key Constituencies Shaped Health Care Media Discourse

“…An agenda refers to ''a general set of political controversies that will be viewed as falling within the range of legitimate concerns meriting the attention of the polity'' (Cobb & Elder, 1971, p. 905). Originated by Lang and Lang (1959) and extended by Cobb, Ross, and Ross (1976), agenda building explains the process by which groups articulate and transform their interests into issues that garner attention, public approval, and responsiveness from elected officials. Agenda-building involves reciprocal influences stemmed from multiple groups such as policy makers, interest groups, and corporations (Kiousis, Popescu, & Mitrook, 2007).…”

Policy Framing in the European Union

“…By choosing whom to engage and whom to keep out of the political deliberation process, their argument concludes, policy makers can shore up support, deliberately create friction and mould the political process towards predefined ends. In one of the first systematic studies of the transition of political issues from the systemic to the institutional agenda, Cobb, Ross and Ross (1976) identify three distinct paths. Tellingly, two of the three paths describe top-down policy formulation that originates in the political as opposed to the public realm.…”