Question

This is Public Administration and the subject is Public Policy and Evaluation

Discuss Kingdon’s theory of agenda setting and the role that it plays in the policy-making process.

Answer 1

In policy theory, there are roughly four things that people study, one imaginary.

• What happens before a decision is made (Agenda Setting & Policy Formation).
• The decision.
• What happens after a decision is made (Implementation).
• (Imaginary) Some analysis to show a connection between what was intended and what happened (Evaluation).

Although, not part of your question, I say that Evaluation is imaginary because it rarely happens. Often when it does happen, it is either used to improve implementation, or becomes part of the agenda setting process.

So, roughly, agenda setting is the part of policy development where government starts to recognize that a problem exists and policy might be necessary.

Literally, it means the moment that a public official puts an issue on to the executives meeting agenda. However, to get to that point, you need lots of other stuff to happen as well.

• The identification of a problem.
• Some assessment of the problem’s importance.
• The political implications of the problem - who thinks it’s important and how powerful they are.
• Information gathering around whether government should be involved.
• Discussion with political leaders, senior servants about whether this is important to the current regime.
• Some idea about whether a solution to the problem exists.
• Dynamics of leadership and trust within the bureaucracy (i.e. is the problem backed by a trusted leader or someone who seems to have poor judgement).
• Review of existing policy.

Policy agenda setting is related to, but should not be confused with, public agenda setting. The latter is what the public generally deems to be important. While politicians may speak to the particular public agenda, it is not always true that a public agenda becomes a policy agenda. In fact, it’s more common that the policy agenda becomes a public agenda rather than the other way around.

The literature on agenda setting is huge. What I describe here is just the tip of the ice berg. For instance, the idea that there is a clear pathway from agenda setting to decision to implementation is often argued to be bogus.

For example, it’s not uncommon that someone is sitting with a solution well before a problem is even noticed. Public servants are often tasked with anticipating rather than recognizing problems. That’s because problems are most often noticed when a disaster (“exogenous shock” in the literature) occurs and people are scrambling.