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Representation and Agenda Setting

Abstract: We develop here a new approach to the study of representation based on agenda setting and attention-allocation. We ask the fundamental question: do the policy priorities of the public and of the government correspond across time? To assess the policy priorities of the mass public, we have coded the Most Important Problem polls conducted by the George Gallup organization into the policy content categories developed by the Policy Agendas Project (Baumgartner and Jones 2002). Congressional attention to a policy area is the proportion of total hearings in a given year that centered on that policy category. We then conducted similar analyses on public laws and most important laws, similarly coded. Finally we analyzed the spatial structure of public and congressional agendas using the Shepard-Kruskal non-metric multidimensional scaling algorithm.

Findings may be summarized as follows:

Agenda congruence: There is an impressive congruence between the priorities of the public and the priorities of congress across time.
Policy congruence: There is substantial evidence of congruence between the priorities of the public and lawmaking in the national government, but the correspondence is attenuated in comparison to agendas.
Issue structure: Although the priorities of the public and congress are structurally similar, the location of issues within that structure differs between congress and the general public. The public 'lumps' its evaluation of the nation's most important problems into a small number of categories. Congress 'splits' issues out, handling multiple issues simultaneously.

Home Papers Policy Agendas Project Other Projects Books Position Papers		Papers Representation and Agenda Setting Abstract: We develop here a new approach to the study of representation based on agenda setting and attention-allocation. We ask the fundamental question: do the policy priorities of the public and of the government correspond across time? To assess the policy priorities of the mass public, we have coded the Most Important Problem polls conducted by the George Gallup organization into the policy content categories developed by the Policy Agendas Project (Baumgartner and Jones 2002). Congressional attention to a policy area is the proportion of total hearings in a given year that centered on that policy category. We then conducted similar analyses on public laws and most important laws, similarly coded. Finally we analyzed the spatial structure of public and congressional agendas using the Shepard-Kruskal non-metric multidimensional scaling algorithm. Findings may be summarized as follows: Agenda congruence: There is an impressive congruence between the priorities of the public and the priorities of congress across time. Policy congruence: There is substantial evidence of congruence between the priorities of the public and lawmaking in the national government, but the correspondence is attenuated in comparison to agendas. Issue structure: Although the priorities of the public and congress are structurally similar, the location of issues within that structure differs between congress and the general public. The public 'lumps' its evaluation of the nation's most important problems into a small number of categories. Congress 'splits' issues out, handling multiple issues simultaneously. Differential carrying capacities. The public tends to focus on a very constrained set of issues, but congress juggles many more issues.

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