Policy Agendas in British Politics

Through a unique dataset covering half a century of policy-making in Britain, this book traces how topics like the economy, international affairs, and crime have changed in their importance to government. The data concerns key venues of decision-making - the Queen's Speech, laws and budgets – which are compared to the media and public opinion. These trends are conveyed through accessible figures backed up by a series of examples of important policies. As a result, the book throws new light on the key points of change in British politics, such as Thatcherism and New Labour and explores different approaches to agenda setting helping to account for these changes: incrementalism, the issue attention cycle and the punctuated equilibrium model. What results is the development of a new approach to agenda setting labelled focused adaptation whereby policy-makers respond to structural shifts in the underlying pattern of attention.

Peter John is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, University College London, UK.

Anthony Bertelli holds the C.C. Crawford Chair in Management and Performance, School of Policy, Planning and Development and the USC Gould School of Law, University of South Carolina, USA.

Will Jennings is ESRC/ Hallsworth Research Fellow, University of Manchester, UK and Research Associate, ESRC Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation, London School of Economics, UK.

Shaun Bevan is Research Associate at the Institute for Political and Economic Governance, University of Manchester, UK.