Issue Hierarchization in Agenda‐Setting: The Case of the European Council Agenda

Eliska Ullrichova

Journal of Common Market Studies, 2023, vol. 61, issue 1, 108-123

Abstract: Agenda‐setting scholars tend to search for a problem that receives the most policy attention, a so‐called primary issue. Since the concept of the primary issue is vague, this article aims to define and implement it in a framework of issue hierarchization leaning on the issue's place, space and framing on the agenda. The position and the hierarchy of issues are considered crucial elements of agenda‐setting but omitted in the literature. The article thus examines the hierarchy of issues in EU agenda‐setting, specifically on the case of the European Council agenda in the period December 2014–December 2020 using a holistic grading method. The findings show that the agenda can consist of more primary and several secondary issues at once. Interestingly, if more primary issues require policy attention, policy‐makers tend to mobilize additional resources to tackle them instead of dropping secondary issues off the agenda.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13361

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:61:y:2023:i:1:p:108-123

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0021-9886

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Common Market Studies is currently edited by Jim Rollo and Daniel Wincott

More articles in Journal of Common Market Studies from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().