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FAMP POPESCU Luminiţa Gabriela
CCASP PUBLIC POLICY AGENDA AND RESPONSIVENESS GOVERNANCE

2. PUBLIC AGENDA

By “Public agenda” we refer to the set of policy issues that the public relates to (Jones and Baumgartner,

2005, p.250). Cobb and Elder suggested that public agenda consists of all issues that are commonly
2
perceived by members of the political community as meriting public attention and as involving matters
within the legitimate jurisdiction of existing governmental authority (Cobb and Elder, 1972, p.85). And, so

the public agenda represents a set of problems to which the public participates.

For our purpose, a public policy problem can be defined as a condition or situation that produces needs
or dissatisfactions of the society for which relief or redress (from government) is sought (Anderson, 2003).

For example, conditions like polluted air, altered food, over populated prisons and cities produce
situations that might create potential problems for citizens, taking into consideration that their
dissatisfaction and discomfort are raising. The degree of dissatisfaction or discomfort (that also involves

governmental intervention) is measured by citizens through a standard or a criterion; if these two rate a
situation as being inevitable, or one for which they are directly responsible for, no governmental action
will be taken, because that situation does not represent a citizen’s will, so it does not find itself on the

public agenda.Objective conditions are seldom so compelling or unambiguous that they determine the PROCEEDINGS OF THE 11 TH ADMINISTRATION AND PUBLIC MANAGEMENT INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ”Strategic Management for Local Communities” 30 th – 31 st October 2015 Bucharest
policy agenda. Hence, knowing how a problem has been defined is essential to understanding the process

of the policy agenda emergence. A policy idea that fails to meet the feasibility criterion is unlikely to be
considered as a serious contender on the public agenda.Because the public opinion has the tendency to
become vague and confused when it comes to technical problems or complex solutions, we have to

mention that the public agenda does not include the public policy solutions that are granted either by the
political elites or by certain public segments. We also emphasize that situations do not become problems
unless they are perceived as such, expressed and brought to the attention of the authorities; this kind of

action is frequently used by officials and politicians that find themselves in search of problems to be
solved.

More than that, a situation becomes a problem on the public agenda if it identifies itself with an area of

state intervention, for which a governmental solution is possible. Regarding this, Aron Wildavsky said that
authorities will rather ignore a problem if it is not multiplied by its solution. Hurricanes and earthquakes
cannot be considered problems due to the fact they are unpredictable, but the damage that they cause

2 The twoauthorsrefertothe systemic/ informal agenda, but intermsof thiswork, systemic/informalagenda and public
agenda may be considered interchangeable.

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