The Role of Governments in Legislative Agenda Setting

The Role of Governments in Legislative Agenda Setting PDF Author: Bjorn Erik Rasch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136870466
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
With a strong comparative framework, this book examines fourteen countries with parliamentary or semi-presidential systems of government to provide a detailed investigation into the mechanisms by which governments determine the agendas of their parliaments.

The Role of Governments in Legislative Agenda Setting

The Role of Governments in Legislative Agenda Setting PDF Author: Bjorn Erik Rasch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136870466
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
With a strong comparative framework, this book examines fourteen countries with parliamentary or semi-presidential systems of government to provide a detailed investigation into the mechanisms by which governments determine the agendas of their parliaments.

Agenda Setting, Policies, and Political Systems

Agenda Setting, Policies, and Political Systems PDF Author: Peter John
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022612844X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
What will gain the system’s attention? “Explores the dynamics of a broad range of policy issues in different countries . . . an important scholarly contribution.” —Political Studies Review Before making significant policy decisions, political actors and parties must first craft an agenda designed to place certain issues at the center of political attention. The agenda-setting approach in political science holds that the amount of attention devoted by the various actors within a political system to issues like immigration, health care, and the economy can inform our understanding of its basic patterns and processes. While there has been considerable attention to how political systems process issues in the United States, Christoffer Green-Pedersen and Stefaan Walgrave demonstrate the broader applicability of this approach by extending it to other countries and their political systems. This book brings together essays on eleven countries and two broad themes. Contributors to the first section analyze the extent to which party and electoral changes and shifts in the partisan composition of government have led—or not led—to policy changes in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, and France. The second section turns the focus on changing institutional structures in Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain, and Canada, including the German reunification and the collapse of the Italian party system. Together, the essays make clear the efficacy of the agenda-setting approach for understanding not only how policies evolve, but also how political systems function.

Presidential Agenda

Presidential Agenda PDF Author: Roger T. Larocca
Publisher: Parliaments & Legislatures
ISBN: 9780814255391
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
It is well understood that the president is a powerful agenda-setting influence in Congress. But how exactly does the president, who lacks any formal power in early stages of the legislative process, influence the congressional agenda? In The Presidential Agenda, Roger T. Larocca argues that the president's agenda-setting influence arises from two informal powers: the ability to communicate directly to voters and the ability to control the expertise of the many executive agencies that advise Congress on policy. ​Larocca develops a theoretical model that explains how the president can raise the public salience of issues in his major addresses, long accepted as one of the president's strongest agenda-setting tools. He also develops a theoretical model that explains how control over executive agency expertise yields a more reliable and persistent influence on the congressional agenda than presidential addresses. The Presidential Agenda tests these theoretical models with an innovative empirical study of presidential agenda setting. Using data from all House and Senate Commerce Committee bills from 1979 to 2002, Larocca converts information about bills into information about policy issues and then traces the path of presidential influence through the committee and floor stages of legislative consideration.

The Oxford Handbook of Legislative Studies

The Oxford Handbook of Legislative Studies PDF Author: Shane Martin
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
ISBN: 0199653011
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 785

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Book Description
Over the past five years, legislative studies have emerged as a field of inquiry in political science. Many political science associations, both national and international, have created standing sections on legislative studies. There has also been a proliferation of literature on legislatures and legislators. This book focuses on legislatures and how they matter, how they have adapted to changes such as globalization and judicialization, and how they have survived the transition to mass democracies.

Setting the Agenda

Setting the Agenda PDF Author: Gary W. Cox
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521853798
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Demonstrates that the majority party seizes agenda control at nearly every stage of the legislative process.

The Role of Governments in Legislative Agenda Setting

The Role of Governments in Legislative Agenda Setting PDF Author: Bjorn Erik Rasch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136870458
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Setting the agenda for parliament is the most significant institutional weapon for governments to shape policy outcomes, because governments with significant agenda setting powers, like France or the UK, are able to produce the outcomes they prefer, while governments that lack agenda setting powers, such as the Netherlands and Italy in the beginning of the period examined, see their projects significantly altered by their Parliaments. With a strong comparative framework, this coherent volume examines fourteen countries and provides a detailed investigation into the mechanisms by which governments in different countries determine the agendas of their corresponding parliaments. It explores the three different ways that governments can shape legislative outcomes: institutional, partisan and positional, to make an important contribution to legislative politics. It will be of interest to students and scholars of comparative politics, legislative studies/parliamentary research, governments/coalition politics, political economy, and policy studies.

The Great Broadening

The Great Broadening PDF Author: Bryan D. Jones
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022662613X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
Beginning in the late 1950s and continuing through the 1970s, the United States experienced a vast expansion in national policy making. During this period, the federal government extended its scope into policy arenas previously left to civil society or state and local governments. With The Great Broadening, Bryan D. Jones, Sean M. Theriault, and Michelle Whyman examine in detail the causes, internal dynamics, and consequences of this extended burst of activity. They argue that the broadening of government responsibilities into new policy areas such as health care, civil rights, and gender issues and the increasing depth of existing government programs explain many of the changes in America politics since the 1970s. Increasing government attention to particular issues was motivated by activist groups. In turn, the beneficiaries of the government policies that resulted became supporters of the government’s activity, leading to the broad acceptance of its role. This broadening and deepening of government, however, produced a reaction as groups critical of its activities organized to resist and roll back its growth.

Governors, Agenda Setting, and Divided Government

Governors, Agenda Setting, and Divided Government PDF Author: Laura A. Van Assendelft
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This book examines divided government from a new perspective. By turning to governors and agenda setting, the stage of the policymaking processes where the opportunities for success in terms of legislative output are defined, perhaps the real impact of divided government may be observed. This book compares the agenda setting strategies of four governors, two in states with divided government and two in states with unified government. The analysis is based on legislative records, the governors' state of the state addresses, and in-depth interviews conducted with the governors, their staff members, state legislators, and journalists. Although divided government does not produce gridlock or stalemate at the state level, it is not without impact on governing. Divided government helps to explain a governor's choice of strategy in agenda setting, influencing whether he will work primarily within the system or go public. However, a combination of other factors also affect the agenda setting process. The four case studies provide examples of how agenda setting strategies are explained best by the interplay between personal characteristics of a governor, including his experience and personality, and political factors, including electoral outcomes, the governor's popular support, and his relationship with the legislature, in addition to divided or unified party control.

Hijacking the Agenda

Hijacking the Agenda PDF Author: Christopher Witko
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610449053
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Why are the economic interests and priorities of lower- and middle-class Americans so often ignored by the U.S. Congress, while the economic interests of the wealthiest are prioritized, often resulting in policies favorable to their interests? In Hijacking the Agenda, political scientists Christopher Witko, Jana Morgan, Nathan J. Kelly, and Peter K. Enns examine why Congress privileges the concerns of businesses and the wealthy over those of average Americans. They go beyond demonstrating that such economic bias exists to illuminate precisely how and why economic policy is so often skewed in favor of the rich. The authors analyze over 20 years of floor speeches by several hundred members of Congress to examine the influence of campaign contributions on how the national economic agenda is set in Congress. They find that legislators who received more money from business and professional associations were more likely to discuss the deficit and other upper-class priorities, while those who received more money from unions were more likely to discuss issues important to lower- and middle-class constituents, such as economic inequality and wages. This attention imbalance matters because issues discussed in Congress receive more direct legislative action, such as bill introductions and committee hearings. While unions use campaign contributions to push back against wealthy interests, spending by the wealthy dwarfs that of unions. The authors use case studies analyzing financial regulation and the minimum wage to demonstrate how the financial influence of the wealthy enables them to advance their economic agenda. In each case, the authors examine the balance of structural power, or the power that comes from a person or company’s position in the economy, and kinetic power, the power that comes from the ability to mobilize organizational and financial resources in the policy process. The authors show how big business uses its structural power and resources to effect policy change in Congress, as when the financial industry sought deregulation in the late 1990s, resulting in the passage of a bill eviscerating New Deal financial regulations. Likewise, when business interests want to preserve the policy status quo, it uses its power to keep issues off of the agenda, as when inflation eats into the minimum wage and its declining purchasing power leaves low-wage workers in poverty. Although groups representing lower- and middle-class interests, particularly unions, can use their resources to shape policy responses if conditions are right, they lack structural power and suffer significant resource disadvantages. As a result, wealthy interests have the upper hand in shaping the policy process, simply due to their pivotal position in the economy and the resulting perception that policies beneficial to business are beneficial for everyone. Hijacking the Agenda is an illuminating account of the way economic power operates through the congressional agenda and policy process to privilege the interests of the wealthy and marks a major step forward in our understanding of the politics of inequality.

Explaining Local Policy Agendas

Explaining Local Policy Agendas PDF Author: Peter B. Mortensen
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9783030909314
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Building on hundreds of thousands of systematically collected and content-coded local policy agenda observations, this book examines – theoretically and empirically - the policy agenda effects of four central aspects of any political system: the institutions that structure politics; the problems confronting the political system; the occurrence of regular and free elections; and the actors navigating the political system. Developing an explanatory model based on these four factors not only improves our understanding of the determinants of the local policy agenda but also contributes to a further integration of local government research, policy agendas research, and the broader discipline of political science. The book may be of particular interest to scholars and students of comparative politics, agenda setting, public policy, and local government.