E. E. Schattschneider in The Semisovereign People= "the definition of the alternatives is the supreme instrument of power" (1960: 55)
==The definition of alternative issues, problems, and solutions is crucial, because it establishes which issue, problems, and solution will gain the attention of the pubic and decision makers and which, in turn, are more likely to gain broader attention. Therefore, agenda setting is one of the important research agendas in public policy.
According to Cobb and Elder (1972), agenda setting is defined as “ a set of political controversies that will be viewed as falling within the range of legitimate concerns meriting the attention of the polity; a set of items scheduled for active and serious attention by a decision-making body”. Put simply, agenda setting is the process by which problems and alternative solutions gain or lose public and elite attention. Group competition to set the agenda is fierce because no society or political system has the institutional capacity to address all possible alternatives to all possible problems that arise at any one time. Groups must therefore fight to earn their issues’ places among all the other issues sharing the limited space on the agenda or prepare for the time when a crisis makes their issue more likely to occupy a more prominent space on the agenda. Even when an issue gains attentions, group must fight to ensure that their depiction of the issue remains in the forefront and that their preferred approaches to the problems are those that are more actively considered. They do so for various reasons. According to Schattschneider, the group that successfully describes a problem will also be the one that defined the solutions to it, thereby prevailing in policy debate. At the same time, groups fight to keep issues off the agenda. Thus, to understand the relationship among groups, power, and agenda setting is the heart of the agenda setting research.
But agendas exists every community and society as well as every body of government including Congress, a state legislature, a county commission, which has a collection of issues that are available for discussion and disposition. All these issues can be categorized based on the extent to which an institution is prepared to make an ultimate decision to enact and implement or to reject particular policies. But all issues or problems can not be considered as an agenda. Cobb and Elder (1972) argue that it is important that the issue or problems can be contained any idea that could be considered by participants in the policy process. The agenda recognized by the members of policy community is named systemic agenda. Cobb and Elder (1972) defined the systemic agenda as "all issues that are commonly perceived by members of the political community as meriting public attention and as involving matters within the legitimate jurisdiction of exiting governmental authority". If a problem or idea is successfully elevated from the systemic agenda, it moves to the so-called Institutional (or governmental) Agenda meaning that "list of items explicitly up for the active and serious consideration of authoritative decision makers". For instance, reforming the immigration policy has long been a systemic agenda in the immigration policy community. The 9/11 attack changed the public attention to the immigration policy and daily based media attention after the 9/11 attack changed the national mood against the current immigration policy and moved up the immigration reform as a systemic agenda to the institutional agenda.
No comments:
Post a Comment