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In the United Kingdom, the transmission between policy promises and statutes is assumed to be both rapid and efficient because of the tradition of party discipline, relative stability of government, absence of coalitions, and the limited powers of legislative revision in the second chamber. Even in the United Kingdom, the transmission is not perfect since legislative priorities and outputs are susceptible to changes in public opinion or media coverage, unanticipated events in the external world, backbench rebellions, changes in the political parties, and the practical constraints of administering policies or programmes. This paper investigates the strength of the connection between executive priorities and legislative outputs measured by the Speech from the Throne and Acts of Parliament from 1911 to 2008. These are categorized according to the policy content coding system of the UK Policy Agendas Project (www.policyagendas.org.uk). Time series cross-sectional analyses show that there is transmission of the policy agenda from the speech to acts. However, the relationship differs by party, strengthening over time for Conservative governments and declining over time for Labour and other governments.

This article considers how UK governments use the Speech from the Throne (also known as the Gracious Speech and the King's or the Queen's Speech) to define and articulate their executive and legislative agenda. The analysis uses the policy content coding system of the Policy Agendas Project to measure total executive and legislative attention to particular issues. This generates the longest known data series of the political agenda in the UK, from the date of the first Parliament Act in 1911 right up to the end of 2008, nearly a century of government agenda setting. Using these data, the article identifies long-run institutional and policy stability in this agenda-setting instrument, and variation in its length and executive–legislative content due to the focusing events of world wars and party control of government. It assesses the degree to which the policy content of the speech is persistent (autoregressive) over time and identifies long-term trends in the total number of topics mentioned in each speech (scope), and the dispersion of government attention across topics (entropy). It also identifies important variation over time that indicates change in the agenda-setting function of the speech and evolution of the agenda in response to policy challenges faced by modern British governments in the period since 1911. Overall, the analysis demonstrates the robustness of the speech as a measure of the policy agenda and executive priorities in the UK.

AbstractThis article analyses the transmission of policy priorities from electoral campaigns to legislative outputs under different institutional configurations. Taking an agenda-setting approach, the article tests whether a mandate effect exists, if incumbents also uptake the priorities of their competitors, and whether and how the introduction of alternation in government impacts on these dynamics. The analysis relies on data sets of the Italian Agendas Project recording the issue content of party manifestos and laws and covering the period 1983–2012. The results of time series cross-sectional models lend support to the presence of a mandate effect in Italy, a mechanism which was strengthened after the introduction of alternation in government. Opposition priorities may have an impact on the legislative agenda, but mostly when considering the legislation initiated in Parliament. Our findings have important implications for the understanding of the impact of government alternation, an institutional feature underlying – with varying intensity – most democracies, on the functioning of democratic representation.

This article considers how UK governments use the Speech from the Throne (also known as the Gracious Speech and the King's or the Queen's Speech) to define and articulate their executive and legislative agenda. The analysis uses the policy content coding system of the Policy Agendas Project to measure total executive and legislative attention to particular issues. This generates the longest known data series of the political agenda in the UK, from the date of the first Parliament Act in 1911 right up to the end of 2008, nearly a century of government agenda setting. Using these data, the article identifies long-run institutional and policy stability in this agenda-setting instrument, and variation in its length and executive-legislative content due to the focusing events of world wars and party control of government. It assesses the degree to which the policy content of the speech is persistent (autoregressive) over time and identifies long-term trends in the total number of topics mentioned in each speech (scope), and the dispersion of government attention across topics (entropy). It also identifies important variation over time that indicates change in the agenda-setting function of the speech and evolution of the agenda in response to policy challenges faced by modern British governments in the period since 1911. Overall, the analysis demonstrates the robustness of the speech as a measure of the policy agenda and executive priorities in the UK. © 2010 The Authors. Political Studies © 2010 Political Studies Association.

Using a unique dataset spanning fifty years of policy-making in Britain, this book traces how topics like the economy, international affairs, and crime have shifted in importance. It takes a new approach to agenda setting called focused adaptatio n, and sheds new light on key points of change in British politics, such as Thatcherism and New Labour.