ABSTRACT
One of the strengths of the agenda-setting and policy change research tradition has been its dedication to temporally based research. In many cases, agenda-setting scholars were at the forefront of what some claim is a ‘historical turn’ in political science towards ‘placing politics in time’ (Pierson 2000: 72). Agenda-setting scholars have long been investigating policy processes that unfold over a decade or more even as other political scientists continue to focus on static relationships. Research on agenda-setting often requires long time frames to illustrate and explain the rise and fall of issues on agendas and the punctuated nature of policy change. But less common are studies which treat time itself as a variable that helps to explain the particular trajectory of a policy issue or set of issues. The relative lack of comparative agenda-setting research helps explain the shortage of studies devoted to this theoretical issue. To appreciate the importance of timing, we must examine agenda-setting and policy change processes around similar issues in two contexts where the timing and sequence of key events and strategies differ.
