Scenario 1B: The Rise and Decline of Issues in Congress- Subtopics

Part A of this scenario showed that there has been a shift in Congressional attention to new issues, particularly Health, Environment, and Law, Crime and Family issues. At the same time, there has been a shift away from old, traditional issues, such as Government Operations, Defense, and Public Lands and Water Management.

What are the composition of these issues? Are there certain subtopics withing these issues that dominate attention? Are there some subtopics that are new and have contributed to the rise in attention? Are there some subtopics that have disappeared from Congressional attention, contributing to the decline of the old issues?

Graph Examples

The charts below, from our library of graph examples, show a selected set of subtopics within the major topics highlighted by Baumgartner as the "new," social issues.

Click on the thumbnails below to view a larger picture in a new window.

Environment Subtopics

The chart to the left displays the trends in environmental protection issues (a subset of the Environment subtopics). Land and water conservation issues and species and forest protection issues had dominated a large part of the Congressional environmental protection agenda in the early period after World War II. Between the 84th and 86th Congresses, the new issue of air pollution and global warming emerged as an important issue in Congressional hearings about the Environment. At the sametime, land and water conservation issues have declined substatially relative to the other subtopics.

Health Subtopics

This chart displays the trends in health care issues. In the period after World War II, the construction of health facilities and public health services played a large role in Congressional attention to health issues. More recently, health care reform and health costs issues and medicare and medicaid issues have come to dominate the health agenda.

Law, Crime, and Family Issues Subtopics

This chart displays the trends in crime-related subtopics within law, crime, and family issues. In the period after World War II, white collar crime dominated the crime hearings agenda. Juvenile crime and the juvenile justice system, also attracted high attention during a couple of periods. More recently, illegal drug production and trafficking has come to dominate a large part of congressional attention to crime issues.

These charts only address a selection of subtopics within the rising issues of Environment, Health, and Law, Crime, and Family Issues.

To explore shifting issue attention within these issues in more detail, or to explore the attention to subtopics of the declining issues, go to Data Tools, to conduct a customized search.

Examples of additional research are below.

Data Tools: Using the Analysis Tool for Additional Research

Which subtopics within each of these "new" issues that have contributed the most to the rise of these issues? How have patterns of attention to different subtopics within each of these issues changed over time? What are some other major topic issues that display distinctive patterns?

Exercise:

Conduct additional research about subtopics within the identified old and new major topics.
Follow a detailed example or Do the exercise yourself

Downloading the dataset

If you are interested in conducting additional research, you can download the raw datasets from our data set index.