JOP 88/3 pp. 967-982 2026-07-01 Original Bottom-Up? Top-Down? Determinants of Issue Attention in State Politics
Andreu Casas, Oscar Stuhler, Julia Payson, Joshua A. Tucker, Richard Bonneau, Jonathan Nagler
PSJ — 2026-03-28
Original Resource Substitution: Local Governments' Issue Attention and Policy Reinvention
Yingxin Zhang, Yixue Yao, Kaifeng Yang
Abstract
ABSTRACT Research on policy reinvention, where a government modifies rather than replicates policy innovations introduced by other governments, has progressed significantly, but how it is influenced by the government's issue attention has not been thoroughly examined. This study introduces a resource substitution framework, in which issue attention serves as a type of organizational resource that not only promotes policy reinvention directly but also compensates for deficiencies in systematic resources. Focusing on the organizational structuring policy regarding public data governance in Chinese cities from 2015 to 2023, we employ a directed dyadic‐based Heckman sample selection model with exclusion restrictions to test the hypotheses. The results demonstrate that issue attention significantly promotes policy reinvention, particularly in resource‐constrained settings, where it acts as a functional substitute for systemic resources. These findings contribute to a broader understanding of issue attention and clarify the conditions under which it drives policy reinvention.
APSR — pp. 1-19 2026-03-03 Original Initiate and Elevate! How Political Parties Can Set an Agenda
DANIEL SANDVEJ ERIKSEN
Abstract
The study of political agenda setting is a cornerstone in political science. Within this literature, political parties are implicitly portrayed as being capable of proactively initiating discussions. However, this fundamental notion of party agency deserves further theoretical and empirical attention. In response, this article crafts a new model (the Issue Initiation Model) that opens the window into parties’ efforts to set an agenda and traces how they initiate and elevate their agenda. The model is tested on an original dataset covering more than 5.5-million tweets by political parties and MPs, coupled with over 750,000 news articles and 419,000 parliamentary questions in the United Kingdom and Denmark from 2015 to 2022. Results show how parties and their MPs can proactively redirect the attention of other actors through strategic planning and orchestrated actions. By theorizing and empirically testing the implicit notion that parties can proactively initiate discussions, this article has important implications for political agenda setting.