Executive Politics and Agenda Dynamics

Co-Chairs: K. Yesilkagit (Utrecht), M. Lodge (LSE), P. Mortensen (Aarhus), A. Timmermans (Leiden) This proposed section brings together two growing strands in the field of political science, executive politics and agenda-setting. The relationship between public bureaucracies, politics and the wider political system has been at the heart of the study of executive politics. In the study of public administration, key interests have moved beyond the study of internal structures, of dominant doctrines, and of reform trends, to the way in which bureaucracies respond to their environment. At the same time, the study of agenda-setting has shown a considerable interest in how policy dynamics evolve, especially in the way in which politics and administration respond to changes in public attention. This growth in similar intellectual concerns is evident in a number of areas. For example, students of regulatory governance have become particularly interested in how regulatory authorities and interventions affect citizens and regulated sectors. Students of bureaucratic autonomy are re-assessing the ways in which public bureaucracies affect the formation and the implementation of public policies. Students interested in the traditional relationship between politics and bureaucracy have more extensively incorporated the role and impact of political saliency, especially in terms of blame-avoidance (Hood 2011), reputation (Carpenter 2010, Maor 2011) and turf protection (Wilson 1989). Interest in executive politics in general, and public administration in particular has developed towards the examination of puzzles on how public bureaucracies interact with their environment, how they reciprocally feed each other, and how they filter out some signals rather than others, thereby favouring some constituencies rather than others. At the same time, the comparative study of political agendas has developed considerably over recent years. An important element of the environment of public bureaucracies consists of the floating of political, social, and economic issues, travelling from agenda to agenda and affecting the politics of prioritisation within virtually all layers of government. The study of issue dynamics and agenda-setting has been forming, just like public administration, a stable pillar within the field of public policy and administration. While being a prominent topic since the early 1960s (Schattschneider 1960), agenda studies have gained a strong impetus during the past two decades (Baumgartner, Jones & Wilkerson 2011). This has led to a number of important findings in terms of the relationship between public opinion and government agenda, as well as the study of government and bureaucratic responsiveness to changing policy moods (Jennings 2009) The goal of this section is to bring together two highly interconnected intellectual strands. Both areas have grown empirically as well as methodologically. Whereas the study of agendas has gained an enormous boost with the application of theoretical concepts as well as advanced quantitative techniques, the field of executive politics is undergoing a similar shift towards the use of more rigorous techniques and theory-driven puzzles, albeit in a somewhat diversified manner as compared to the comparative agendas project. What is more important, however, is the fact that both strands have a considerable common ground for developing joint research questions and agendas. We therefore invite researchers at all stages of their career to consider aspects of executive politics and agenda-setting across a number of panels. Comparative and theoretically-informed work is encouraged.