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Frank R. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
David A. Rochefort and Roger W. Cobb (Eds.), The Politics of Problem Definition: Shaping the Policy Agenda. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994.
Recent contributions to the policy studies literature are helping to reorient the manner in which we perceive agenda setting and issue definition activities. From its origins in the study of public opinion (McCombs & Shaw, 1972) and American political institutions (Schattschneider, 1960; Cobb & Elder, 1972), agenda setting and issue definition search has become tied closely to policy studies. This association no doubt is a reflection of the fact that policy issues, basic units of analysis in the field, are difficult to define, describe, and characterize. Those who study a policy area or issue can understand their topic better through understanding its origins and evolution. Those who investigate the process of agenda setting and problem definition can find useful cases of study in the experiences of specific policy concerns. Two recent books provide important contributions to these areas of inquiry: Agendas and Instability in American Politics, by Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones, induces a new theory of agenda setting to interpret the dynamics of policymaking; The Politics of Problem Definition: Shaping the Policy Agenda, edited by David A. Rochefort and Roger W. Cobb, investigates the construction of issue images and definitions. Both books offer new insights on agenda setting, problem definition, and policy subsystem behavior.
The Baumgartner and Jones book is an ambitious effort, seeking not only to display the linkages between agenda setting and subsystem politics, but to explain the forces of policy change: "Our primary thesis is that the American political system, built as it is on a conservative constitutional base designed to limit radical action, is nevertheless continually swept by policy change, change that alternates between incremental drift and rapid alterations of existing arrangements" (p. 236). Both stability and change are a reflection of how institutional settings or venues are used to advance and shape images of policy issues. A generally accepted definition, or understanding, of an issue often is associated with periods of policy subsystem stability during which time the attendant subsystem dominates policy actions and controls issue interpretations....