Agendas, alternatives

Kingdon's landmark work on agenda setting and policy formation is now offered in a Longman Classics Edition. This enduring work of original research, drawn from interviews with people in the U. The book grapples with the questions: How do subjects come to officials' attention? How are the alternatives from which they choose generated? How is the governmental agenda set? Why does an idea's time come when it does? Hailed as one of the finest books about public policy- making, and winner of the Aaron Wildavsky Award, this book's rich detail and engaging prose make it a text that both students and instructors will savor.

How Does an Idea's Time Come? Participants on the Inside of Government. Search within Merton et al. Key, Jr. Cohen, James G.

March, and Johan P. Pressman and Aaron B. Wildavsky, Implementation Oliver E. McCubbins, Roger G. Noll, and Barry R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Go to page:. Participants perceive swings in national mood, elections bring new administrations to power and new partisan or ideological distributions to Congress, an Agenda setting, in the world of politics, is when a problem becomes identified as an issue that calls for government attention, discussion, and--possibly--decision making.

Participants perceive swings in national mood, elections bring new administrations to power and new partisan or ideological distributions to Congress, and interest groups of various descriptions press or fail to press their demands on government. The author sees three streams that must come together for an issue to be placed on the agenda--a political stream just noted above , a policy stream in which some policy proposal emerges as "best" , and a problem stream a problem develops that people label as important.

If they come together and if the window of opportunity for success is there, then the issue can become an agenda item. If the streams do not come together, agenda placement is unsuccessful--as with President Clinton's health care plan.

That plan had two of three requirements in place. One, the political stream was supportive. A new President had been elected with his party having a majority in both houses of Congress; furthermore, Clinton outlined as a campaign issue support for a more ambitious health care program for Americans.

The confluence of these two factors produced something like a "mandate" for change. Two, the problem stream saw health care bubbling up toward the top. That is, increasingly, people seemed to define health care as a serious problem about which something had to be done.

Nonetheless, no major initiative emerged to be fully considered. Clinton's plan was very nearly DOA dead on arrival once serious discussion began. No single policy proposal garnered enough support. Democrats supported several different plans--such as a single payer system in which government becomes the insurer , "pay or play" in which businesses would largely fund health care insurance , and the Clinton plan itself which focused on managed care.

Thus, the policy stream never did "come together" around any single proposal. As a result, the initiative died and no substantial changes were forthcoming in the health care system. What emerges in each stream is, to a large extent, "contingent," depending upon many factors--including chance.

The result is unpredictability. It may be that this work overemphasizes chance and contingency and underplays the role of human agency for instance, the role of policy entrepreneurs who labot to get issues placed on the agenda and acted upon. Nonetheless, this is an exemplary work and well worth attending to if one is interested in setting the political agenda.

Aug 17, Todd rated it really liked it Shelves: policy. This is a seminal text in the public policy literature. The model is considerably deeper and attempts to be a more all-encompassing theory of public policy setting than the text book summaries give credit.

Like the models in psychology or economics, it is best to have several models at your disposal that you can compare between and pick and choose to apply to best fit the sit This is a seminal text in the public policy literature.

Like the models in psychology or economics, it is best to have several models at your disposal that you can compare between and pick and choose to apply to best fit the situation at hand.

From my perspective, I like to zoom out and compare the usefulness and efficacy of a theory of public policy against the topical memoirs and opinion writers , sociological e. Webber, Giddens and socialist models e. Mouffe, Meiskins Wood. The proponents of socialist models counter that the value of their theories are not their use-value, but their value in transcending late stage capitalism and pointing the way to a more equitable alternative.

From my perspective, that is their usefulness. But there is no point in forever pining for the new Jerusalem or the kingdom of heaven if it is nothing but a pipe dream. Public administration and public policy studies are relatively speaking the newest entrants to this equation. Taking a step back, it is worth noting what they are very briefly. They are modern disciplines; meaning they emerged and came of age during the late 19th century and the 20th century. They were designed as and tend to be progressive, in the original political sense of the word.

They were designed to model and conceptualize the public policy process as it actually happens and functions. They also aspire to model the areas of dysfunction and conceptualize which are features and which are bugs of the system. One advantage of the Kingdon model is his conceptualization of the coupling of the streams and the emergence of windows of opportunities.

Basically, Kingdon models how windows of opportunity have opened when the streams converge. Namely, windows open when, at the same time, the voting blocs in congress and the administration are aligned in the politics stream, out of the problem stream a problem has arisen or is constructed through changes in the national mood or galvanizing events, and within the policy stream the policy solutions have been already worked through by academics, think tanks, and congressional staffers and are ready at hand for congress and the administration when the issue reaches the decision agenda.

In a strange unanticipated convergence, the Kingdon model for agenda setting and the public policy process is rivaled on the European post-Marxist side of the pond by Louis Althusser in his last phase and Chantel Mouffe.

Their models, although coming from vastly different backgrounds, provide a topography of government or the state, the relations to political problems or interests from the base, the articulation and deliberation of alternatives, and how issues reach the decision agenda.

In either case, the use-value is as a model or tool in the hands of constituencies, coalitions, and organizations on the ground. They prove their usefulness as models to fit to situations within the state and public policy process and provide the ability to act when windows of opportunity present themselves.

Feb 10, Sarah Clement rated it really liked it Shelves: phd-and-professional-reads. I really enjoyed this book.

Although I know that Sabatier and others contend that the Multiple Streams model does not quite meet their standards of a theory of the policy process, I thought this book had a lot to offer.

The book is clear, well organised, interesting, and compelling. I think it provides an excellent foundation for anyone studying political science, public policy, or public administration. I also think it provides a useful heuristic, if not a theory or metatheoretical framework. K I really enjoyed this book. Kingdon provides a more compelling argument for his model than the authors of many other books I have read, perhaps because it is "clear enough to be wrong" and based on fairly large number of case studies - particularly when compared to other policy books.

This book is very American, however, and I do think that the differences in the American system make this model an imperfect fit for elsewhere because the elements of the model are intertwined with the characteristics of America's style of government. All in all, though, this was a highly enjoyable read and pretty quick too.

It only took me a day, and I am not a fast reader. Jun 15, Natalie Jennings rated it really liked it. I very good synopsis of policy, problems, agendas, politics, etc. Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. Instead of looking at how particular programs get put in place or how political decisions are made, Kindgon focuses on how issues come to the attention of government in the first place.

Why do some issues get on the agenda on others not? He provides a theory that includes three separate, but loosely-coupled streams — problem, policy, and political. The problem stream is where particular problems get identified — due to focusing events, changes in indicators, or other items. The policy stream is dominated by academics, researchers, bureaucrats and others that look into the details of various issues. Possible specific alternatives for programs are developed in the policy stream.

The political stream is dominated by the visible people in government — the president, Congress, and heads of agencies — they help to identify the major issues of political importance, but not the detailed alternatives. Political issues are based on the national mood, the party in power, and other political events. Issues get on the decision agenda when all three of these streams come together — usually because a policy entrepreneur has recognized a window of opportunity and brought them together.

In the first chapter, Kingdon explains the aim of his book — to explain why and how particular issues come to dominate the government and decision agenda. He makes a distinction between the development of issues and alternatives. Issues are the broad areas of concern — health care costs, water-way fees, etc.

He also explains that his research was carried out using a series of interviews and questionnaires. Kingdon begins by examining the importance of various actors within the government. He first looks at the administration, finding that the President is ranked in his interviews and questionnaires as one of the most important players in setting the agenda.

If the President decides to focus on a particular issue, it is sure to be moved to the top of many other decision-makers lists. Political appointees — the people who run various department within the executive branch, are ranked relatively high.

Kingdon suggests that these less visible actors play a greater role in identifying specific alternatives, rather than setting the agenda. Congressmen are ranked almost as highly as the president in their importance in decision making, while their staff not ranked so high. These findings help support the idea that the elected officials — the president and congressmen — are the people with the most influence on agenda-setting within the government.

There are a number of groups that are not officially working for the government, but that have some influence on agenda-setting and policy-making.