A resurgence of interest in agenda-setting is underway in political science. While agenda-setting used to be mainly studied within the field of public policy, it is now gradually becoming a key approach in comparative politics, party studies, political communication, legislative studies etc. The basic ideas underlying all these studies is that policy problems are in infinite supply, that attention to political issues is scarce due to the limited information-processing capacities of individuals and institutions, and that any policy change and decision making require preceding political attention. The key issue is then: why are political actors/institutions devoting attention to some issues while ignoring many others? The main driver of political attention, agenda-setting scholars claim, is incoming information. Political actors and institutions must prioritize and act upon a staggering amount of information when determining which policy issues to address.
