Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (2nd edition)

By: John W. Kingdon

Sign Up Now! Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title. Learn about membership options, or view our freely available titles.

Synopsis: Understanding the complexity and dynamics of how the national agenda is set is essential to an explanation of the policy-making process in the United States. Locating the real policy agenda of the government requires an in-depth and prolonged analysis of broad arenas of political action, policy formulation, and policy definition. Prior to John W. Kingdon's Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, first published in 1984, political scientists did not pay much attention to agenda setting. Kingdon's Agendas established an important theoretical foundation for all post-1984 scholarship on the policy-making process. He defines the policy agenda as "the list of subjects to which government officials and those around them are paying serious attention."