Policy Agendas in the United Kingdom
The UK Policy Agendas Project explores the nature of policy-making attention in the UK Parliament between 1911 and 2008.
The political agenda refers to the limited space within which issues receive attention from policy-makers and opinion-formers, such as the media, organized interests and the public: “…the list of subjects or problems to which governmental officials, and people outside of government closely associated with those officials, are paying some serious attention at any given time”. (John Kingdon, 1984, Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies: p. 3). This research project applies the policy content coding framework of the US Policy Agendas Project to generate a systematic and consistent record of a number of important measures of the political agenda in the UK. The project has generated a codebook that is consistent with the original US coding system, adding UK-specific examples and topic descriptions. This project is in the process of generating data on issues that attract the attention of policy-makers, media and the public.
These include:
- The Speech from the Throne, also know as the Queen's Speech (1911-2008)
- Acts of UK Parliament (1911-2008).
- Prime Minister’s Questions (1997-2008).
- The Times of London (1960-2008).
- Public expenditure by function (1955-2008).
- Bills and Hearings of the Scottish Parliament (1999-2008).
- Public opinion about the 'most important problem facing the country'.
The original coding of the Speech from the Throne was funded by a British Academy small grant, 'The Policy Priorities of UK Governments: a Content Analysis of King’s and Queen’s speeches, 1945-2005'.
This research is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (ESRC Reference: RES-062-23-0872 ‘Legislative policy agendas in the UK’) as part of a European Science Foundation (ESF) EUROCORES European Collaborative Research Projects (ECRP) application, ‘The Politics of Attention: West European politics and agenda-setting in times of change’, led by Professor Stefaan Walgrave, University of Antwerp. The project is part of the Comparative Agendas Project directed by Professor Frank Baumgartner of The University of North Carolina, which also applies the policy content coding framework of the US Policy Agendas Project and applies quantitative methods to analyse dynamics of policy-making attention in Europe.
