The balancing act of establishing a policy agenda: Conceptualizing and measuring drivers of issue prioritization within interest groups

Interest groups are important intermediaries in Western democracies, with the potential to offer political linkage and form a bridge between the concerns of citizens and the agendas of political elites. While we know an increasing amount about the issue‐based activity of groups, we only have a limited understanding about how they selected these issues to work on. In this article, we examine the process of agenda setting within groups. In particular, we address challenges of conceptualization and measurement. Through a thorough review of the group literature, we identify five main factors that are hypothesized to drive issue prioritization. We operationalize items to tap these factors and then empirically assess this theoretical model relying on data from a survey of national interest groups in Australia. Our findings, from a confirmatory factor analysis, provide support for the multidimensional nature of agenda setting. We discuss how this provides a firm conceptual and methodological foundation for future work examining how groups establish their policy agenda.     

Conceptualizing consultation approaches: identifying combinations of consultation tools and analyzing their implications for stakeholder diversity

Policy Sciences - Contemporary governance is increasingly characterized by the consultation of different types of stakeholders, such as interest groups representing economic and citizen interests,...     

Public Administration Research from a Practitioner Perspective

Recent research has questioned both the rigor and theoretical development of public administration research. The proposed solutions have generally endorsed a more academically oriented research agenda. Authors have discussed practitioner needs, but the focus has been on the appropriateness of different research methods rather than the types of knowledge needed. We seek to contribute to this ongoing debate by comparing the knowledge needs identified by members of the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) with 15 years of research in Public Administration Review . We found much published research matching the needs of ICMA members, but it focused on a relatively narrow range of topics. We recommend incorporating a concern for relevance into efforts to improve public administration research. This will help to ensure that we build a knowledge base that makes a substantial contribution to practice.     

Social explanations for job insecurity: Group influences on causal attributions

Job insecurity—a concern about the future existence of the job—is one of those unexpected events which lead to a search for causal explanations. This paper pays attention to the social nature of these attributions. The social character of the causal attribution process investigated here appears from the kind of attributions that employees make and the degree in which causal attributions are influenced by social ideas shared by colleagues and other groups. We research these social explanations for job insecurity on the basis of the results of a survey of job insecurity and causal attributions among 311 employees in the Netherlands.     

The resolution trust corporation in historical perspective

Abstract

This paper contrasts the asset disposition challenges facing the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) with similar challenges that faced two earlier government agencies: the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) and the Federal Asset Disposition Association (FADA).

The paper first compares the quantity and diversity of RTC assets with the somewhat fewer but more uniform assets (one‐ to four‐family homes) sold by the HOLC. The FADA's challenge was quite modest compared with the RTC and the HOLC. The paper then contrasts current RTC policy issues with those that arose with the HOLC and the FADA. The paper does not, however, make specific policy recommendations.     

Cooperation Challenges for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon

While the Agreement between the United Nations and Lebanon providesa solid framework for cooperation between the Special Tribunaland Lebanon, Security Council Resolution 1757 (2007) is silenton the duty of third states to assist the Tribunal. As a result,the Special Tribunal will be confronted with a variety of obstaclesand problems in obtaining their cooperation, which may seriouslyhamper its functioning.     

Peasant involvement in the Cuban revolution

Existing explanations of peasant involvement in the Cuban revolution emphasise such social‐psychological factors as the peasants’ purported ‘land hunger’. An alternative explanation focuses on the meshing of a localised landlord/squatter conflict with a state/guerrilla conflict. The case‐study lends further evidence to the contention that explanations relying on social organisational factors, rather than state of mind factors, are better able to account for why people become involved in social movements.     

The instituting of brute facts

An earlier version of this paper was submitted to a working group at the Conference of the International Association of Philosophy and Literature (Atlanta, 1989), and discussed with H.N. Casta~neda (Bloomington, 1989). I am grateful for the valuable criticism received on both occasions. My visit to the United States was supported by a grant from the Dutch Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen and from my own Faculty of Philosophy at Tilburg University, which I acknowledge with sincere gratitude.