ABSTRACT Interest groups are key actors in shaping political agendas. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how they determine their lobbying priorities at the earliest stage of the policy process. This study advances a novel conceptual framework for studying interest groups' issue prioritization in the agenda setting stage along three complementary dimensions: agenda breadth, agenda direction, and agenda responsiveness. Drawing on original survey data from 630 EU level interest groups, our results show that issue prioritization is driven primarily by the type of constituents a group represents. Economic interest groups tend to pursue broader lobbying agendas, focus on defending the policy status quo, and are more responsive to internal member pressures when prioritizing undesired issues. Citizen groups, by contrast, typically adopt narrower agendas, prioritize challenging the status quo, and respond more strongly to external issue salience when determining their lobbying priorities. Overall, the study advances our understanding of how interest groups navigate competition for political attention and contributes to broader debates on agenda‐setting in contemporary democracies.
ABSTRACT Extensive research highlights public apprehension toward immigrants and robots, but few studies examine how demographic challenges, particularly population aging, influence these perceptions. The public may not naturally consider population aging when evaluating immigration or automation policies, as these issues are often discussed in silos. We thus hypothesize that priming the public to consider population aging will lead them to view automation and immigration more favorably. Using pre‐registered survey experiments in three countries—Japan, South Korea, and France—we investigate whether providing factual information about population aging alters attitudes toward immigration and automation. We find that in Japan, the world's most aged country, such information generates more favorable attitudes toward both immigration and automation. In Korea, the fastest‐aging country, it improves only immigration attitudes. In France, where the elderly population is average for the EU, we find no significant effect. We find, however, that these positive effects in Japan and Korea do not persist when respondents consider automation and immigration policies alongside other options like adjusting the retirement age. These findings suggest that the public's policy preferences in response to population aging are subject to country‐specific contexts, as well as to different issue linkages activated in policy discussions.
ABSTRACT New governments frequently inherit issues from their predecessors, and as a result, various policy problems tend to remain on the agenda for many years. Previous research examining the role of policy inheritance has focused mainly on the agenda during a government's term in office. These studies find that because governments must first contend with the problems they inherit, there is considerably less room for new issues to emerge on the agenda. This study seeks to examine the idea of policy inheritance through the lens of coalition agreements. Coalition agreements, a feature of multiparty governments, are drafted shortly after elections and reflect the outcome of the political struggle. For this reason, one can expect that coalition agreements contain mostly issues that parties regard as important. By implication, changes in the coalition agreements' issue agenda would be a function of the political change produced by the electoral cycle, rather than of inheritance. Analyzing coalition agreements in three countries—Israel, the Netherlands, and Norway—across 42 elections, we find no evidence for this assumption. Agendas in coalition agreements do not vary with changes in the party composition of the coalition, changes in the ideological distance between parties, or changes in the party holding the office of Prime Minister. This indicates that even when new coalition governments are preparing for their term in office, inheritance remains the primary driver of agenda‐setting.
ABSTRACT Preregistration is increasingly used in policy research, but its value depends on whether preregistered commitments can be clearly linked to reported analyses. Policy studies often involve multiple outcomes, evolving administrative data, consequential design and analytic choices, and adaptive implementation, making it difficult to distinguish prespecified tests from subsequent adjustments. This research note proposes a modular, policy‐oriented companion framework for using existing preregistration infrastructure. The framework combines a shared core that defines the estimand, outcomes, and identification strategy with design‐specific modules for field experiments, administrative‐data quasi‐experiments, and behavioral policy trials. Together, the components serve two purposes: claim traceability, by linking reported results to the original plan, and governed adaptation, by providing a transparent record of changes made during the study. The aim is not to prevent adaptation, but to show which analyses were prespecified, which were revised through documented amendments, and which were developed later. This approach aims to improve the interpretability and transparency of policy research while remaining feasible in applied policy settings.
The implementation of public policy is increasingly diffuse with responsibilities divided among several levels of government administration, the private sector, and nonprofits. In the face of such diffusion, many advocate for transparency initiatives to inform the public about policymaking. However, it remains unclear whether transparency initiatives clarify the blame and credit for policy, or what this means for collective action and accountability. Such concerns are especially pressing in complex settings like the non-renewable extractives sector (oil, mining, and natural gas). We assess policy attributions of blame and credit using data from a field experiment that randomizes stakeholder engagement in Western Uganda's oil sector, building on our prior work showing that this intervention increased collective action. While participating in multistakeholder forums improved transparency for communities, we find that it did not change their attributions. In other words, improving transparency does not ensure that citizens will update their opinions about who is to blame for the problems they face. Yet, this did not preclude greater collective action. Evidence from this intervention highlights the need for more exploration of pathways linking transparency, collective action, and accountability. 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La implementaci & oacute;n de pol & iacute;ticas p & uacute;blicas es cada vez m & aacute;s difusa, con responsabilidades divididas entre varios niveles de la administraci & oacute;n p & uacute;blica, el sector privado y las organizaciones sin fines de lucro. Ante esta dispersi & oacute;n, muchos abogan por iniciativas de transparencia para informar al p & uacute;blico sobre la formulaci & oacute;n de pol & iacute;ticas. Sin embargo, a & uacute;n no est & aacute; claro si estas iniciativas aclaran la responsabilidad y el m & eacute;rito de las pol & iacute;ticas, ni qu & eacute; implica esto para la acci & oacute;n colectiva y la rendici & oacute;n de cuentas. Estas preocupaciones son especialmente acuciantes en contextos complejos como el sector extractivo no renovable (petr & oacute;leo, miner & iacute;a y gas natural). Evaluamos las atribuciones de responsabilidad y m & eacute;rito en las pol & iacute;ticas utilizando datos de un experimento de campo que aleatoriza la participaci & oacute;n de las partes interesadas en el sector petrolero del oeste de Uganda, bas & aacute;ndonos en nuestro trabajo previo que demostr & oacute; que esta intervenci & oacute;n increment & oacute; la acci & oacute;n colectiva. Si bien la participaci & oacute;n en foros multiactor mejor & oacute; la transparencia para las comunidades, observamos que no modific & oacute; sus atribuciones. En otras palabras, mejorar la transparencia no garantiza que los ciudadanos actualicen sus opiniones sobre qui & eacute;n es el responsable de los problemas que enfrentan. Sin embargo, esto no impidi & oacute; una mayor acci & oacute;n colectiva. La evidencia de esta intervenci & oacute;n subraya la necesidad de explorar m & aacute;s a fondo las v & iacute;as que vinculan la transparencia, la acci & oacute;n colectiva y la rendici & oacute;n de cuentas.
