Comparing Government Agendas

Executive Speeches in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Denmark

Bibliographic Data

ID6245197
AuthorsPeter Bjerre Mortensen (0000-0001-5809-3260, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark), Christoffer Green-Pedersen (0000-0001-7153-9634, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark), Gerard Breeman (0000-0001-9735-4689, Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands), Laura Chaqués-Bonafont (0000-0002-0724-4871, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain), Will Jennings (0000-0001-9007-8896, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK), Peter John (0000-0002-7934-1187, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK), Anna M Palau (0000-0002-3473-1114, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain), Arco Timmermans (0000-0003-2451-6688, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands)
Year2011
Volume44
Issue8
Pages973-1000
Publication date2011-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueComparative Political Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0010-4140 • E-ISSN: 1552-3829
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0010414011405162
OpenAlexW2142553039
LanguageEN
Citations received79
References cited40

At the beginning of each parliamentary session, almost all European governments give a speech in which they present the government’s policy priorities and legislative agenda for the year ahead. Despite the body of literature on governments in European parliamentary democracies, systematic research on these executive policy agendas is surprisingly limited. In this article the authors study the executive policy agendas—measured through the policy content of annual government speeches—over the past 50 years in three Western European countries: the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Denmark. Contrary to the expectations derived from the well-established “politics matters” approach, the analyses show that elections and change in partisan color have little effect on the executive issue agendas, except to a limited extent for the United Kingdom. In contrast, the authors demonstrate empirically how the policy agenda of governments responds to changes in public problems, and this affects how political parties define these problems as political issues. In other words, policy responsibility that follows from having government power seems much more important for governments’ issue agendas than the partisan and institutional characteristics of governments

Economics · Government (linguistics · Legislature · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public policy · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Policy Transfer and Learning · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies · Public Administration

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