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Qui détient la propriété des programmes ? Contrairement à ce qui est avancé, les programmes présentés pour une même élection ont tendance à se recouper énormément dans leurs enjeux.

Are election campaigns relevant to policymaking, as they should in a democracy?This book sheds new light on this central democratic concern based on an ambitious study of democratic mandates through the lens of agenda-setting in five West European countries since the 1980s. The authors develop and test a new model bridging studies of party competition, pledge fulfillment, and policymaking. The core argument is that electoral priorities are a major factor shaping policy agendas, but mandates should not be mistaken as partisan. Parties are like 'snakes in tunnels': they have distinctive priorities, but they need to respond to emerging problems and their competitors' priorities, resulting in considerable cross-partisan overlap. The 'tunnel of attention' remains constraining in the policymaking arena, especially when opposition parties have resources to press governing parties to act on the campaign priorities. This key aspect of mandate responsiveness has been neglected so far, because in traditional models of mandate representation, party platforms are conceived as a set of distinctive priorities, whose agenda-setting impact ultimately depends on the institutional capacity of the parties in office. Rather differently, this book suggests that counter-majoritarian institutions and windows for opposition parties generate key incentives to stick to the mandate. It shows that these findings hold across five very different democracies: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK. The results contribute to a renewal of mandate theories of representation and lead to question the idea underlying much of the comparative politics literature that majoritarian systems are more responsive than consensual ones.

This chapter focuses on public-policy analyses through the lens of agenda-setting. Approaches in this tradition assume that no objective fact is a problem in itself and that any problem needs to be constructed. Problems are necessary preconditions to policy change, but decision-makers’ attention is limited and the competition for attention is fierce. Kingdon has proposed the most useful framework to think about the conditions for reaching the political agenda: feasibility, acceptability in the policy community, costs, public support and receptivity among decisionmakers.Baumgartner and Jones’ research program has developed an influential coding system to classify attention by topics. This has allowed for the study of agenda-setting dynamics. They have shown that policy change tends to be characterized by Punctuated Equilibria: most policies are stable most of the time and when they finally change, they will tend to change radically. This program has been extended to more than 20 countries within the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP), providing a unique opportunity to compare agenda-setting dynamics across various institutional settings and situations.To illustrate the possibilities of CAP data, this chapter studies in detail the role of media and lawmaking in France, the UK and the US. We compare, in particular, environmental issues and issues related to police and justice. In line with classical media studies, we look at the extent to which the media may influence agenda-setting and lawmaking. The analysis shows that the relation between media and lawmaking in the area of environmental politics present no clear pattern. They feature attention peaks at different times, while following no clear trend. Police and justice present higher average levels of attention in the three countries, but – again – do not present univocal patterns. While attention has increased in France and the UK, the correlations with the lawmaking agenda are at best temporary. Overall, our quick analysis confirms that the driving forces of media and lawmaking diverge and that their relation, where it exists, is conditional on other factors that we do not observe here.This type of agenda-setting perspective provides the possibility to look at system-level dynamics and to understand the interaction between different topics. This chapter has illustrated some of the possibilities of this type of data that has allowed a renewal of the study of agenda-setting.

This policy book seeks to identify patterns and determinants of policy appreciation. We examine three aspects that influence policy preferences in detail. First, we look at partisanship and show that party identification systematically and strongly determines policy preferences. Voters who identify with parties on the right have similar preferences for government spending, preferring an increase in spending for security, order and the economy but a decrease in spending for social policies. Voters who feel closer to leftist parties, to the contrary, prefer an increase in expenditure in most of the policy fields. Second, we account for issue publics. Our analysis shows that citizens who are directly affected by a policy (e.g. pensioners and policies that concern retirement payments) prefer a stronger increase in government spending or government activity in “their” policy field. Third, our analysis addresses how the perceived importance of an issue and media attention moderate the impact of partisanship on policy appreciation. We show that both factors have moderating dimension on the role of party identification. We rely on nine waves of the Policy Priorities Survey (2014 – 2017). Our data on citizens’ attitudes encompassed 13.570 respondents. In addition, we have collected data on monthly media attention in France for each of the policy issues considered in the survey. Our analysis covers media attention of the three leading national newspapers. The implications of our study, highlighting the relevance of our findings beyond the French case and showing how our analysis might stimulate future research.

This policy book seeks to identify patterns and determinants of policy appreciation. We examine three aspects that influence policy preferences in detail. First, we look at partisanship and show that party identification systematically and strongly determines policy preferences. Voters who identify with parties on the right have similar preferences for government spending, preferring an increase in spending for security, order and the economy but a decrease in spending for social policies. Voters who feel closer to leftist parties, to the contrary, prefer an increase in expenditure in most of the policy fields. Second, we account for issue publics. Our analysis shows that citizens who are directly affected by a policy (e.g. pensioners and policies that concern retirement payments) prefer a stronger increase in government spending or government activity in “their” policy field. Third, our analysis addresses how the perceived importance of an issue and media attention moderate the impact of partisanship on policy appreciation. We show that both factors have moderating dimension on the role of party identification. We rely on nine waves of the Policy Priorities Survey (2014 – 2017). Our data on citizens’ attitudes encompassed 13.570 respondents. In addition, we have collected data on monthly media attention in France for each of the policy issues considered in the survey. Our analysis covers media attention of the three leading national newspapers. The implications of our study, highlighting the relevance of our findings beyond the French case and showing how our analysis might stimulate future research.

contribution à un site web; 1ères lignes : On ne compte plus les prises de position pour ou contre certaines politiques liées à la crise sanitaire : pour le masque dès la primaire, pour une limitation des rassemblements privés ou pour le soutien au secteur aérien. En voilà quelques-unes publiées cette semaine.La crise sanitaire que nous traversons met à l’épreuve nos systèmes politiques dans toutes leurs dimensions. Les experts, mais aussi les citoyens questionnent la pertinence de l’action publique, des choix politiques ou la compétence des décideurs. Et il est vrai que cette crise peut d’abord être comprise comme une crise de politique publique.Face à un défi sanitaire sans précédent, les autorités publiques ont dû agir dans l’urgence. Rapidement, une série de problèmes se sont enchaînés exposant des difficultés de coordination, des problèmes de communication ou encore des problèmes de moyens. Qui plus est, les réponses politiques ne pouvaient être efficaces que dans la mesure où elles parvenaient à changer effectivement le comportement des citoyens.