This document discusses agenda setting in public policymaking. It defines agenda setting as the process of adopting social issues or problems as policy problems to be addressed by the government. The document outlines the five stages of policymaking according to Kingdon: agenda setting, formulation, adoption, implementation, and evaluation. It describes different levels of agendas, from the agenda universe to the decision agenda. Finally, it discusses actors involved in shaping policy agendas, including political officials, civil society, international organizations, and the public. It also summarizes Kingdon's model of three streams that influence when an issue gets on the political agenda.

1. Agenda Setting
PSU 08208
INSTRUCTOR: MR.SANCHAWA,DH
dsanchawa@mnma@.ac.tz

2. Introduction
• Public Policy making can be considered to be a
set of processes, including
1. Agenda setting
2. Policy formulation
3. Policy adoption
4. Policy implementation
5. Policy evaluation (Kingdon, 2003).

3. Introduction
• This lecture presents on the first process ; the
agenda setting

4. Agenda
• Kingdon (2003) has defined the agenda as the
list of subjects or problems to which
governmental officials, and people outside of
government closely associated with those
officials, are paying some serious attention at
any given time.

5. Agenda
• An agenda is a collection of problems,
understandings of causes, symbols, solutions,
and other elements of public problems that
come to the attention of members of the
public and their governmental officials.
• Agendas exist at all levels of government.
Every community and every body of
government has a collection of issues that are
available for discussion and disposition

6. What is agenda setting?
• The agenda setting is the process or behavior
to adopt social issue or problem as a policy
problem; in the process, social issue or
problem is chosen as a governmental issue
• Agenda setting is the process by which
problems and alternative solutions gain or
lose public and elite attention.

7. Agenda setting
• 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 to
prepare for the time when a crisis makes their
issue more likely to occupy a more prominent
space on the agenda

8. Agenda setting
• Because the agenda is finite, interests must
compete with each other to get their issues
and their preferred alternative policies, on the
agenda.
• They must also compete with each other to
keep their issues off the agenda, using the
power resources at their disposal.

9. Levels of agenda setting
• Agenda universe – all ideas that could possibly
be brought up and discussed in a society or a
political system.
• Systemic agenda – 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 existing
governmental authority.

10. Levels of agenda
• Institutional agenda – the list of items
explicitly up for the active and serious
consideration of authoritative decision-
makers.
• Decision agenda – items about to be acted on
by a governmental body.

11. Types of agenda
• Rogers and Dearing (1988) identify three types
of agenda setting:
1) public agenda setting, in which the public's
agenda is the dependent variable (the
traditional hypothesis)
2) media agenda setting, in which the media's
agenda is treated as the dependent variable
(aka agenda building)

12. Types of agenda
3) policy agenda setting, in which elite policy
makers' agendas are treated as the dependent
variable . It is some times called political
agenda setting

13. Actors involved in policy agenda
• Many individuals and institutions are involved
in shaping policy agenda, including:-
• Political officials,
• Civil society organizations,
• United nations Agencies, such as UNDP

14. Actors involved in policy agenda
• Political administrative officials such as Prime
Minister and other Ministers such as Minister
of finance ,
• Legislators,
• Academicians
• The Media as well as the Public

15. Kingdon model: how an issue get on
the political agenda?
• Three steams
a) A problem steam; marked by systematic
indicators of problem by a sudden crises, or by a
feedback that is not working as intended –the
issue get on agenda
b) Policy stream ; relate to those policy actors and
communities who attach their solutions(
policies) to emerging problems. This concept
also relate to the actual policy being promoted

16. Three steam
• C) political steam; this consists of the public
mood, pressure group campaigns, elections
results, partisan or ideological distribution etc
Other factors????