Attention to issues in a system of separated powers: The macrodynamics of American policy agendas

Theories of agenda setting ignore the macrodynamics of shifts in attention to policy issues in the American system of separated powers. Changes in att ention to issues emerge from interactions between the three branches of gov ernment, as well as interactions between the government and the public. To map these complexities, we use vector autoregression methods to sort out th e causal sequences and macrodynamics of issue attention over time between s ystemic and institutional agendas for three broad issue areas. The analyses reveal significant interactions among the institutional agendas and betwee n the systemic and institutional agendas, but provide more support for a to p-down pattern of issue attention than for the bottom-up pattern suggested by most past literature. Reductionist theories positing either a linear, un idirectional sequence of issue movement or randomness should be viewed caut iously in light of these findings, which point to the need for more holisti c views of agenda setting.