John Kingdon’s analysis of agenda-setting been widely cited on the literature on agenda-setting in Europe at both the national and European Union levels, but there has been no comprehensive assessment of its applicability to a European context. This paper argues that a systematic assessment of the Kingdon framework and the theories of politics embedded in it that takes advantage of the rich diversity of political systems in Western and Central Europe can provide important insights that will advance the comparative study of agenda-setting. The first section of the paper briefly summarizes argues Kingdon’s analysis and argues that it can be roughly divided into (1) an analytical framework or set of categories for analyzing agenda-setting and a hypothesized set of loose relationships between those categories as well as (2) a set of specific causal arguments about agenda-setting politics that draw heavily on American political experience and on pluralist theories of policymaking. The second section looks in more detail at specific arguments in Kingdon’s agenda-setting framework from a European perspective, focusing specifically on four European systems: the European Union, Sweden, Italy and the United Kingdom. The third section draws on the prior sections to address whether there are identifiable cross-nationally groupings of agenda-setting politics within Europe, and what the underlying institutional, cultural or other dynamics are that drive this sorting of countries.
