This article demonstrates how party leaders (frontbenchers) and backbenchers use their access to UK Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) to represent the policy agenda. Building on comparative research on parliamentary questions and agenda-setting as well as taking account of the particular context of PMQs, we argue that party leaders and followers draw attention to different kinds of policy topics with the express purpose of influencing the government. Based on a content analysis of over 9,000 questions between 1997 and 2008, we demonstrate how the posing of questions affects subsequent agenda, varying according to whether questions come from the front or backbench, from government and opposition and from different parties. The findings demonstrate that PMQs helps both the opposition and backbenchers draw attention to issues that the government and opposition party leadership does not always wish to attend to.
Political parties matter for government outcomes. Despite this general finding for political science research, recent work on public policy and agenda-setting has found just the opposite; parties generally do not matter when it comes to explaining government attention. While the common explanation for this finding is that issue attention is different than the location of policy, this explanation has never truly been tested. Through the use of data on nearly 65 years of UK Acts of Parliament, this paper presents a detailed investigation of the effect parties have on issue attention in UK Acts of Parliament. It demonstrates that elections alone do not explain changes in the distribution of policies across issues. Instead, the parties' organizations, responses to economic conditions, and size of the parliamentary delegation influence the stability of issue attention following a party transition.
In this article, we argue that policy punctuations differ from each other in ways that reflect distinct types of political change. We identify three main kinds. The first are procedural changes that have unique unrelated policies within the same issue area. Within the remaining large policy changes, high‐salience punctuations are associated with increased attention in the media, whereas low‐salience punctuations do not attract such scrutiny. The analysis applies the typology to data from the UK Policy Agendas Project, identifying punctuations from the content of Acts of the UK Parliament between 1911 and 2008. Using evidence from the historical record and the data series, the analysis places each observation within the typology. We claim that the typology has a more general application and could be replicated in other jurisdictions and time periods. We conclude that attention to the historical record and qualitative studies of punctuations can complement and inform the analysis of aggregate data series.
This paper introduces the Comparative Agendas Project system of coding as well as a wealth of gathered and in process data from Latin America using this established and reliable system for capturing policy attention comparatively and over time. While this is not the first introduction of the coding system, it is the first introduction aimed at both Latin America and a new type of political system beyond North American and European democracies. To accomplish this, we first present an overview of the Comparative Agendas Project and the Master Codebook used to create comparative policy attention data across countries, over time, and between agendas. These details as well as national contexts are then considered in Latin America in general as well as the first wave of data from the region on Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador.
This paper introduces the Comparative Agendas Project system of coding as well as a wealth of gathered and in process data from Latin America using this established and reliable system for capturing policy attention comparatively and over time. While this is not the first introduction of the coding system, it is the first introduction aimed at Latin America and a new type of political system beyond North American and European democracies. First, we present an overview of the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) and the Master Codebook used to create comparative policy attention data across countries, over time, and between agendas. These details of CAP are discussed for Latin America in general and for Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador, countries that recently started to gather data using these coding. ; Este artículo presenta el sistema de codificación del Comparative Agendas Project, que es capaz de capturar la atención política de manera comparada y a lo largo del tiempo. Presenta también una amplia gama de datos recogidos y procesados en América Latina, sobre la base de este consolidado y fiable sistema de codificación. Aunque no sea un sistema inédito, esta es la primera vez que se introduce en América Latina y en un tipo de sistema político diferente del que se observa en las democracias de América do Norte y Europa. Para ello, ofrecemos una descripción del Comparative Agendas Project y de su libro de códigos (Master Codebook), usado para obtener datos de atención política de forma comparada entre países y distintos tipos de agendas a lo largo del tiempo. Esos detalles se discuten en relación con América Latina en general y con el contexto nacional de Brasil, Colombia y Ecuador, países de la región que cuentan con el primer conjunto de datos recogidos con ese sistema de codificación. ; Esse artigo apresenta o sistema de codificação do Comparative Agendas Project, que é capaz de capturar a atenção política de maneira comparada e ao longo do tempo. Apresenta também uma ampla gama de dados coletados e em processamento na América Latina, já usando esse consolidado e confiável sistema de codificação. Embora não seja um sistema inédito, essa é a primeira vez que está sendo introduzido na América Latina e em um tipo de sistema político diferente do que se observa nas democracias da América do Norte e da Europa. Para isso, oferecemos um panorama do Comparative Agendas Project e de seu livro de códigos (Master Codebook), usado para obter dados de atenção política de forma comparada entre os países e suas agendas, ao longo do tempo. Esses detalhes são discutidos em relação a América Latina em geral e ao contexto nacional do Brasil, Colômbia e Equador, países da região que contam com a primeira leva de dados processados com esse sistema de codificação.
Abstract This paper introduces the Comparative Agendas Project system of coding as well as a wealth of gathered and in process data from Latin America using this established and reliable system for capturing policy attention comparatively and over time. While this is not the first introduction of the coding system, it is the first introduction aimed at Latin America and a new type of political system beyond North American and European democracies. First, we present an overview of the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) and the Master Codebook used to create comparative policy attention data across countries, over time, and between agendas. These details of CAP are discussed for Latin America in general and for Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador, countries that recently started to gather data using these coding.
This article develops an attention-based model of party mandates and policy agendas, where parties and governments are faced with an abundance of issues and must divide their scarce attention across them. In government, parties must balance their desire to deliver on their electoral mandate (i.e. the 'promissory agenda') with a need to continuously adapt their policy priorities in response to changes in public concerns and to deal with unexpected events and the emergence of new problems (i.e. the 'anticipatory agenda'). Parties elected to office also have incentives to respond to issues prioritized by the platforms of their rivals. To test this theory, time series cross-sectional models are used to investigate how the policy content of the legislative program of British government responds to governing and opposition party platforms, the executive agenda, issue priorities of the public and mass media.
