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The Dynamics of Foreign Policy Agenda Setting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

B. Dan Wood  and
Jeffrey S. Peake
B. Dan Wood
Affiliation:
Texas A&M University
Jeffrey S. Peake
Affiliation:
Texas A&M University
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Abstract

Theoretical and empirical work on public policy agenda setting has ignored foreign policy. We develop a theory of foreign policy agenda setting and test the implications using time-series vector autoregression and Box-Tiao (1975) impact assessment methods. We theorize an economy of attention to foreign policy issues driven by issue inertia, events external to U.S. domestic institutions, as well as systemic attention to particular issues. We also theorize that the economy of attention is affected by a law of scarcity and the rise and fall of events in competing issue areas. Using measures of presidential and media attention to the Soviet Union, Arab-Israeli conflict, and Bosnian conflict, we show that presidential and media attentions respond to issue inertia and exogenous events in both primary and competing issue areas. Media attention also affects presidential attention, but the president does not affect issue attention by the media.

Type
Research Note
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 92 , Issue 1 , March 1998 , pp. 173 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1998 

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