Political Change Part 3 Change Agenda Processes

Our last installment on Political Change introduced Dr. John Kingdon and his pioneering research on political agenda-setting in the United States (Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (first published 1984, updated second edition in 2003). Agenda-setting represents the first phase of carrying out change – convincing national constituencies that a problem (or opportunity) exists that deserves public and political attention and action.

In our last posting, we reviewed Kingdon’s taxonomy of visible and “hidden” agenda participants. Kingdon argued that visible actors such as candidates tend to influence the contents of agendas (i.e. the topics for focus), whereas the hidden actors (academics, lobbyists, career civil servants) affect the alternatives.

In this posting, we will discuss Kingdon’s contributions in defining the key processes involved in defining and responding to public policy agenda setting. At the highest level, Kingdon defined three distinct but interacting “streams” of processes, labeled problems, policies, and politics: people recognize problems; they generate proposals for public policy changes; and they engage in such political activities as election campaigns and pressure group lobbying.

He observes that: “Problem recognition is critical to agenda setting: The chances of a given proposal or subject rising on an agenda are markedly enhanced if it is connected to an important problem. Some problems are seen to be so pressing that they set agenda all by themselves. Once a particular problem is defined as pressing, whole classes of approaches are favored over others, and some alternatives are highlighted while others fall from view. So policy entrepreneurs invest considerable resources bringing their conception of problems to officials’ attention and trying to convince them to see problems their way. The recognition and definition of problems affect outcomes significantly.”

As to politics, Kingdon writes that “political events flow along according to their own dynamics and rules, independent of problem recognition or the development of policy proposals. Participants perceive swings in the 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.”

Thirdly, the policy stream is where alternative responses to agenda problems are generated and narrowed. Based on his research, Kingdon argues that the policy stream is dominated by hidden participants such as analysts and lobbyists, who specialize in particular areas and issues.
This is a key point for our discussion of political change and campaign politics: presidents – and presidential candidates – have relatively little importance from a creative perspective in this area of public policy.

Kingdon writes: “The generation of policy alternatives is best seen as a selection process, analogous to biological natural selection.” He compares policy development with the kind of “primeval soup” of organic chemicals that preceded the appearance of life on earth: many ideas float around, bump into one another, and form new combinations and recombinations.
In short, the origins of policy “seem a bit obscure, hard to predict, understand and structure.”

However, selection – namely the policy options that emerge from the soup is not that mysterious. Specifically, selection criteria for accepting or discarding options include: technical feasibility, alignment with community values, and the anticipation of “future constraints” including budget realities, politicians’ receptivity, and acceptability to special interests and the general public.

Thus, proposals are evaluated in terms of political support and opposition, as well as logical criteria. In addition, proposals typically take a while to “cook”: Kingdon suggests that “recombination (the coupling of already familiar elements) is more important than mutation (the appearance of wholly new forms). Thus entrepreneurs, who broker people and ideas, are more important than inventors. A long softening-up process is critical to policy change.”

Finally, Kingdon points out the different process dynamics dominate these three streams. Specifically, when participants recognize problems or settle on certain policy alternatives, they do so primarily on the basis of persuasion: “they marshal indicators and argue that certain conditions ought to be defined as problems, or they argue that their proposals meet such tests as technical feasibility or value acceptability.” In contrast, in the political stream, “participants build consensus by bargaining – trading provisions for support adding elected officials to collations by giving them concessions that they demand, or compromising from ideal positions that will gain wider acceptance.”

To review what Kingdon has explained so far about political change:

* Presidents -and candidates- are but two types of actor in very crowded political environments
* These actors can exert significant influence, but primarily in setting problem agendas
* Developing solutions to problems and gaining acceptance for them is a lengthy, hard process
* Presidents are not likely to be key players here, much less expediters.
* The political stream is largely independent of agenda setting and solution development

Our next (and final!!) installment on this topic will add one final element of complexity to the mix, namely how the problem definition, solution development, and political streams interact with one another. I believe that this is Kingdon’s most important contribution to the theory of public policy. To give you a preview – as a reward for your patience – what dynamics adds to the complexities already raised is the brute fact that timing is everything.