Editorial Review:

Re-issued as part of the "Longman Classics in Political Science" series, Kingdon's renowned work features a new Foreword exploring the book's historical and enduring contributions. Kingdon's landmark work on agenda setting and policy formation is now offered in a Longman Classics Edition. This enduring work of original research, drawn from interviews with people in the U.S. federal government over the course of four years, examines the questions of how issues get to be issues for legislators. The book grapples with the questions: How do subjects come to officials' attention? How are the alternatives from which they choose generated? How is the governmental agenda set? Why does an idea's time come when it does? Hailed as one of the finest books about public policy- making, and winner of the 1994 Aaron Wildavsky Award, this book's rich detail and engaging prose make it a text that both students and instructors will savor.

Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 / 5.0

Agenda Setting: The Comprehensive Model:

This book was used as the underlying basis to understanding the policy process in my graduate level class that I took recently.
Overall I would give this book 5 stars because it is relatively thorough and it encompasses a great deal in a concise model that is easy to understand.
Kingdon discusses that his model is set within three streams, problem, policy and political. Each of these streams have their own unique characteristics that work to help merge with the others. When these streams, ideally... more info

Major work on political agenda setting:

Agenda setting, in the world of politics, is when a problem becomes identified as an issue that calls for government attention, discussion, and--possibly--decision making. This book is one of the most important works on agenda-setting.
John Kingdon has stated that:
Political events flow along according to their own dynamics and their own rules. Participants perceive swings in national mood, elections bring new administrations to power and new partisan or ideological distributions to Congress, and... more info

Good theory, easy to read:

Kingdon has produced an innovative and useful theory of the policy process. This book is clearly not intended for the lay reader, but for political scientists and policy specialists interested in theorizing about policy formation.
Kingdon's writing style is somewhat formal, and at times stiff, but the book is easy to get through. Kingdon provides many concrete examples of the ideas he discusses, making the abstract principles easier to understand.
Recommended for classes on the policy process,... more info

Great, just a little expensive:

John Kingdon attempts to answer very difficult questions in his work "Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies." What makes an idea's time come? What makes people in and around government attend to some subjects and not to others? In short, Kingdon explores how ideas become policy in his 1994 award-winning book.

The book makes many interesting conclusions, as Kingdon uses scientific research methods to discuss how ideas become policy. It is amazing that Kingdon is able to quantify how influential... more info

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