Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies

Citation

Kingdon, J. W. (2010). Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (2nd ed.). Longman (Pearson). Longman Classics in Political Science edition, with a foreword by James A. Thurber and a new epilogue.

Chapter Summary

The book is built from interviews with people in and around the US federal government, supplemented by case studies, government documents, party platforms, press coverage and public opinion surveys. Its aim is to explain how subjects come to officials' attention, how the alternatives they choose among are generated, and why an idea's time comes when it does. The ten chapters, an epilogue and a methods appendix fall into three movements: the cast of participants, the three processes that run through government, and the way those processes meet.

Chapter 1: How Does an Idea's Time Come?

The opening chapter poses the central puzzle of agenda setting: why some subjects receive serious attention from government at a given moment while others do not. It frames the questions the rest of the book answers and introduces the study on which it rests.

Chapters 2–3: Participants on the Inside of Government; Outside of Government, but Not Just Looking In

Two chapters survey the actors. The first covers participants inside government; the second turns to those outside it, and its title signals that they are active players in shaping what government considers rather than observers.

Chapter 4: Processes: Origins, Rationality, Incrementalism, and Garbage Cans

This chapter steps back from the actors to ask what kind of process produces decisions. Its title names the models it weighs: where ideas originate, comprehensive rationality, incremental change and the "garbage can" view of organized choice.

Chapters 5–7: Problems; The Policy Primeval Soup; The Political Stream

These three chapters take the streams one at a time. Chapter 5 is about how conditions come to be seen as problems; Chapter 6 about the "primeval soup" in which policy proposals originate and compete; Chapter 7 about the political stream of events and forces in the broader political environment.

Chapter 8: The Policy Window, and Joining the Streams

The chapter brings the three streams together. It examines the policy window, the moment at which the streams can be coupled and a subject can move onto the agenda; this is the part of the book that gave the "multiple streams" account its name.

Chapters 9–10: Wrapping Things Up; Some Further Reflections

The final chapters summarize the argument and draw out its wider implications for how policy is made.

Epilogue: Health Care Reform in the Clinton and Obama Administrations

Added in this reissue, the epilogue compares the Clinton administration in 1993 with the Obama administration in 2009 and 2010 to show how agenda setting, actors and alternatives shape policy. A short appendix on methods follows.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–4: Agendas, Participants and Process

• Governmental agenda: the list of subjects to which officials and those around them are paying serious attention at a given time.
• Alternatives: the policy proposals from which decision makers choose; the book asks how these are generated and narrowed, not only how they are decided.
• Garbage can model: one of the models of organizational choice, alongside rationality and incrementalism, that Chapter 4 weighs.

Chapters 5–8: The Streams and the Window

• Problem stream: how conditions come to be defined as problems that demand attention.
• Policy primeval soup: the setting in which ideas and proposals float, combine and compete before some are taken up.
• Political stream: the political environment of national mood, organized forces and government turnover that conditions what is attractive.
• Policy window: the opening during which the streams can be joined and an item can reach the decision agenda.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A question earlier work left aside. The publisher describes the book as the first to consider how issues come to be issues, as distinct from how they are decided. That shift of focus is its enduring contribution.
• A broad evidence base. Interviews with people in and around the federal government are combined with case studies, government documents, party platforms, press coverage and opinion surveys, so the argument is not resting on a single kind of source.
• A clear organizing structure. The chapter titles themselves lay out the argument: actors, process, then problems, policies and politics, then the window that joins them. This makes the book easy to navigate and to teach from; James Thurber's foreword in this edition says he has used it in undergraduate and graduate public policy seminars since it first appeared and that it generates lively discussion.
• A current case. The epilogue applies the framework to health care reform under two administrations, which lets readers see it used on a recent example.

Limitations

• Scope. The study is based on the US federal government, so readers interested in other political systems or in state and local policy will need to ask how far the account travels.
• Age of the core evidence. The interviews and cases behind Chapters 1–10 belong to the original study; only the epilogue brings the story forward to 2009–2010.
• Pace. At about 270 pages the book is a sustained empirical study rather than a short framework statement, and readers new to the policy process may prefer a textbook overview first.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is the course's dedicated study of one question: how issues reach the agenda. The textbooks cover the whole policy process. Thomas Birkland's An Introduction to the Policy Process follows issues from agenda setting through design and implementation and explains the main theories; Kraft and Furlong's Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives combines the politics of policymaking with the tools of analysis; and Thomas Dye's Understanding Public Policy presents competing models of the policy process before applying them to policy areas. Kingdon is the book to read after one of these, when the agenda-setting stage needs a deeper account.

Christopher Weible's edited Theories of the Policy Process is a graduate text in which proponents of each major framework present their assumptions, concepts and evidence, and is the natural next step for placing Kingdon's account among its rivals. Theodoulou and Roy's Public Administration: A Very Short Introduction is about a different stage, how governments turn policy into services, and complements Kingdon rather than competing with him.

How to Use This Book

The book suits graduate students and advanced undergraduates who already have an introductory grounding in public policy or American government. It is also useful for anyone who needs the vocabulary of streams, windows and agendas that other policy research assumes.

A practical plan:

• Core: Read Chapter 1 to fix the question, then Chapters 5 through 8 in order. These four chapters contain the argument about problems, policies, politics and the window.
• Context: Read Chapters 2–3 on participants and Chapter 4 on process when you want to see where the streams come from, or when you are comparing different models of decision making.
• Application: Read the epilogue next, and try the framework on a policy issue you know. Ask what the problem, policy and political streams were and what opened the window.
• Methods: Consult the appendix on methods if you want to judge how the interview-based evidence was collected.