The Construction of EU Policy Agendas in Comparative Perspective: Agenda dynamics in EU and US health and environmental policies

Princen, Sebastiaan. (2007) The Construction of EU Policy Agendas in Comparative Perspective: Agenda dynamics in EU and US health and environmental policies. In European Union Studies Association (EUSA) > Biennial Conference > 2007 (10th), May 17-19, 2007, pages 36, Montreal, Canada.

Abstract

Since ‘organization is the mobilization of bias’, as Schattschneider famously put it, we may expect policy agendas to be affected by the institutional set-up of political systems. Comparisons between different political systems may tell us more about how institutional frameworks affect agenda dynamics. In this paper, I will compare policy agendas in the fields of health and environmental policy in the EU and the US over the past 30 years, using Baumgartner and Jones' policy agendas coding scheme. The institutional frameworks governing policymaking processes in these two political systems are quite different, arguably leading to different agenda dynamics in terms of actors and decision-making processes. In the field of health policy, this indeed leads to widely differing agenda outcomes. In the field of environmental policy, however, the EU and the US show striking similarities in terms of the types of issues that have topped the agenda in the past three decades. This suggests that, under certain conditions, different institutional frameworks and agenda dynamics may lead to similar agenda outcomes.