Agenda Setting

Question 1

_________ are good mechanisms to influence governmental action and get policies on the agenda?

Answer 1

Crisis’

Question 2

What are 3 three ways that a health issue gets on the policy agenda.

Answer 2

1. Focusing events (pandemic)
2. High burden of disease
3. Incrementalism (Politics as usual)

Question 3

What are focusing events?

Answer 3

• Sudden
• Relatively uncommon
• Can be reasonably defined as ‘harmful’ or revealing the
  possibility of potentially greater future harms
• Have harms that are concentrated in a particular
  geographical area or community of interest
• Known to policy makers and the public simultaneously (there are some issues that affect you/the public, but policy makers are not aware)
• create policy windows
• focus events are NOT a guaranteed way to get things on the agenda

Question 4

What is a Policy Window?

Answer 4

• Points in time when the
  opportunity arises for an issue to come onto the policy
  agenda and be taken seriously with a view to action.
  – If we don’t have a policy window, we don’t know when to bring the issue up
  - It helps put the issue on the table and figure out
  what to do about it

Question 5

What is the Policy Agenda?

Answer 5

List of issues to which an organization, usually the
government, is giving serious attention at any one
time with a view to taking some sort of action.

Question 6

What is Agenda Setting?

Answer 6

• Process by which certain issues come onto the policy
  agenda from the much larger number of issues
  potentially worthy of attention by policy makers
• Policy change begins with agenda setting
• Policy change does not happen unless it gets on the agenda

Question 7

What is Incrementalism?

Answer 7

• it is ‘Politics-as-usual’ - policy change occurs,
  if it does at all, through a gradual accumulation of small changes
• Default is usually no change
• Policy change is in incremental steps

Question 8

What is the rational model of policy-making?

Answer 8

1. IDENTIFY the problem
   
   2. ESTABLISH decision criteria
   3. WEIGH decision criteria
   4. generate ALTERNATIVES
   5. EVALUATE alternatives
   6. CHOOSE the best alternative
      
      7. IMPLEMENT the decision
      8. EVALUATE the decision

• Linear process
  
  • Starts with a problem, analyze it, implement a resolution
• The model illustrates how policy decision are ought to mAde rather than how they are made

Question 9

The higher the burden of disease, the more policy makers will do about it? T OR F

Answer 9

False - that is not always the case
- the more thy will care about it; but does not mean that they will implement change

Question 10

Problem-framing?

Answer 10

• Depends on decision-maker (ie. some will be very sympathetic toward COVID, and agree and be motivate to implement change)
• How one defines/frames a problem will impact whether it gets on the policy agenda
  (ie. framing an opiod crisis as a law enforcement problem where more funding for police is required, rather than investing in things that prevent opiod overdose)
• How one defines/frames a problem predicts policy solutions (ie. how we talk about a problem automatically creates possible solutions for it)
• ‘Law of the instrument’
  (policy makers have pre- ideas about how they want to respond to an idea, they will respond based on what they believe as opposed to what is appropriate)

Question 11

What are Agenda Setting models?

Answer 11

Empirically-based (not what we think, but what is studied) models that help to explain why particular issues get on organizations’/governments’ policy agendas, or why they do not reach policy agendas:

Question 12

What are the 2 Types of Agenda Setting:

Answer 12

1) Hall et al.’s model of legitimacy, feasibility, and support
2) Kingdon’s Policy Streams/Multiple Streams model

Question 13

Hall et al.’s model of legitimacy, feasibility, and support

Answer 13

• [o]nly when an issue and likely response are high in terms of
  their legitimacy, feasibility and support do they get on to a government agenda

Question 14

What is the legitimacy component of the Hall et. al Model?

Answer 14

Legitimacy - A characteristic of those issues which policy makers see as appropriate for government to act on

• someone was brutally criticized for trying to implement having smaller cups to decrease sugar intake of the population
• This was seen as illigetimiate to the rest of the population
• They said it is up to the if they want to consume as much sugar as in the big cup
• For this reason, it was never implemented

Question 15

What is the feasibility component of the Hall et. al Model?

Answer 15

Feasibility - A characteristic of those issues for which there is a practical solution.
- if they do not think there is something they can do, they wont try
- when weed was legalized, they were concerned if it was feasible to develop the same model as LCBO for weed

Question 16

What is the support component of the Hall et. al Model?

Answer 16

Support - A characteristic of those issues to which the
public and other key political interests want to
see a response

Question 17

Kingdon’s Model of Agenda Setting

Answer 17

Policies are only taken seriously by governments when:
1) The problem they are addressing is perceived as being
a public matter requiring government action
2) The policy solutions being proposed are perceived as
technically feasible and consistent with dominant social values
3) The politicians/ policymakers have the motivation and opportunity to enact policy solutions

• policy emerges through 3 separate processes: the problem stream, the policy stream, and the politics stream
• Each of the streams follow their own path and once they align, action is taken
• They can align by accident or by policy entrepreneurs
• When they align, they create a policy window
  (This is the point at which a policy gets onto the agenda)

Question 18

What is the Problem Stream?

Answer 18

Indicators of the scale and significance of an issue which give it visibility

• Is there a problem? What is it?
• Do we know/is there consensus regarding the cause(s) of the
  problem?
• Do people know about the problem? (Public perceptions of the problem)
• Problem recognition & framing

Question 19

What is the Policy Stream?

Answer 19

• The set of possible policy solutions or alternatives
  developed by experts, politicians, bureaucrats and
  interest groups, together with the activities of those
  interested in these options
• Are there practical, feasible policy solutions to address
  the problem? If not, this is not going anywhere

Question 20

What is the Politics Stream?

Answer 20

• Political events such as shifts in the national mood or public opinion, elections and changes in government, social uprisings, demonstrations and campaigns by
  interest groups
• Is there political will to address the problem?
• even if there consensus, if there is visibility, we have a solution, if our politicians don’t care, it will not get on the agenda

Question 21

Opioid Crisis Examples

Answer 21

Problem Stream
- the # of people affected by opioids is concerning
- there is a problem, a consensus, and visibilty

Policy Stream
- they can propose safe injection sites which have evidence that they decrease the prevalence of deaths

Politics Stream
- politicians care about bein elected
- One of their priorities is doing what their constituents favour ‘
- Since the public did not like SIS, the PM decided to cut it

Question 22

Is keeping issues off the policy agenda important?

Answer 22

the power to keep things off the policy agenda is as important as understanding the power to push certain issues on the government’s agenda