Agenda-Setting in the European Union

Abstract

© Sebastiaan Princen 2009Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-22053-9All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

Path dependence and technological expectations in transport policy: the case of Finland and the UK

“…longer periods of stasis interrupted by shorter periods of change) arising from a change in the image or idea of a policy problem and hence allowing the involvement of new people and new perspectives Jones, 1993, 2002;Princen, 2000;Egmond and Zeiss, 2010). Policy stasis in the sense of the continuation of past policy paths is explained by the dominance of closed groups of policy experts, but with policy equilibrium also subject to competitive processes, both between government departments and in wider society, in which actors seek to achieve policy change that is consistent with their agendas (ibid).…”

Image and venue as factors mediating latent spillover pressure for agenda-setting change

“…Incremental decision-taking (over grand designs) results from the unintended consequences of the policy process; precisely, what the functionalists termed 'latent' as opposed to 'manifest' outcomes. As Haas (1970: 627) later argued, political actors are incapable of long-range purposive behaviour, stumbling from one decision to the next, with imperfect knowledge of the consequences and up Figure 1 Venue and image strategies in the EU Source: After Princen (2009Princen ( , 2011 against deadlines. Second, institutional venues comprise technocrats who facilitate -or 'engineer' -the (re)framing of an issue previously low on the agenda, by matching it with one receiving greater attention, thus advocating which issues merit political attention.…”

“…The literature which is applied to EU policymaking is, however, in its relative infancy. Significant research has been made in the last five years by scholars of the EU with policy cases on bioterrorism, anti-smoking policy, health care, alcoholism and fisheries, seeking to account for the forces at play in influencing the degree of attention that issues receive (Princen 2007(Princen , 2009(Princen , 2010(Princen , 2011Princen and Rhinard 2006). Despite Peters' (1996) and Pollack's (1997) contributions to the debate on agendasetting, the literature is scant compared with EU decision-making.…”

The Agenda Set by the EU Commission: The Result of Balanced or Biased Aggregation of Positions?

“…For the EU political system substantial theoretical and conceptual advances have been made (Princen, 2009;Princen and Rhinard, 2006;Baumgartner and Mahoney, 2008). So far agenda-setting is primarily explained by the interplay between venues and framing.…”