The ProjectBorn in 2009 by the joint effort of a small group of young Italian researchers from different universities, the Italian Policy Agendas Project has progressively grown and it is now established as an active partner in the "Comparative Agendas Project" research network. This international project, now involving 12 countries as well as the European Union, aims at extending the theory and methods originally developed to study policy dynamics in the United States to other countries.
Our main study focus is on attention, allegedly a scarce resource in politics. Why are some problems and/or solutions prioritized instead of others? Given a limited attention span, what account for the way political actors direct their attention? Answering these and other related questions means getting to the heart of politics. After all, as widely emphasised by the literature on agenda-setting, an issue must be at least considered by the decision-maker before being acted upon. To study the dynamics of attention and how they affect policy change, we trace cross-sectional and longitudinal changes in different national agendas and public policy outcomes. Our project is using an adapted version of the US codebook to code the party, government, parliament agendas as well as the policy content of Italian legislative measures and budget allocations. The Italian Policy Agendas Project has the support of the Italian Ministry of Education and Research (Prin 2007 - prot. scrwt4 and Prin 2009 - prot. 2009TPW4NL_002) and the Department of Social and Political Studies (Università degli Studi di Milano). |
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