ABSTRACT
Why does the EU address some problems and not others? And what does this tell us about the functioning of its political system? The range of policy problems that political systems could address at any point in time is virtually endless, but the key resource needed to detect problems – attention – is limited. The allocation of attention, in addition, is not necessarily proportional to the severity of problems. Quite the opposite: problems are often ignored for a long time, and underreactions are frequently followed by overreactions. The entry and prioritisation of policy problems in the political agenda – the set of issues that receive serious consideration in a political system – is fundamentally a political process. Therefore, studying agenda setting helps in understanding not only public policy decisions, but also the political processes behind those decisions, and thus the functioning of the political system as a whole.
