Assessing interest group agenda-setting influence across issues: tools for conceptual and methodological challenges

Although significant controversy in the political science literature has crystalised around the question of interest group influence in policy processes, scholars focus mainly on policy influence. Studies analysing IGs’ agenda-setting influence are scarce due to difficulties inherent in conceptualizing and operationalizing the abstract concept. The purpose of this research note is to stimulate further research on the extent to which groups can affect the process of political agenda-setting. First, it proposes a typology of agenda-setting influence which considers instances of both pushing a ‘dream’ issue on the agenda and blocking a ‘nightmare’ issue off the agenda. Second, I outline the methodological challenges associated with identifying and empirically studying cases in which an issue was kept off the agenda and suggest ways to overcome them. Finally, I discuss common approaches for gauging groups’ policy influence to detect opportunities for operationalizing agenda-setting influence. Two operationalizations are distinguished for large-N studies: an assessment of attributed agenda-setting influence and an evaluation of whether groups’ attained their preferences vis-à-vis the political prioritization of an issue. While the research note reveals that both approaches have their shortcomings, I conclude that triangulation of different assessments allows us to improve on the state of the art.