Comparative Policy Agendas Projects

Building on the US Policy Agendas Project, colleagues and collaborators have started efforts to conduct similar projects in other political systems. This page contains links and information about these projects. Scroll down this page to see the following topics:

Announcing a Workshop on Computer-Based Text Coding, August 15-17, 2007

APSA Short Course Information

Special Issue of JEPP, Comparative Studies of Policy Agendas

Links to Comparative Agendas Web Sites

Notes on comparative replications

Announcing a Workshop on Computer-Based Text Coding, August 15-17, 2007

APSA 2006 Short Course information. On August 30, 2006, we held a short course at the APSA meetings in Philadelphia concerning comparative policy agendas projects. Click below to read the handouts.

• Introduction / outline
• US Policy Agendas Project Update
• US Encyclopedia of Associations Update
• Pennsylvania Policy Database
• Denmark Update
• Denmark English-language topic codebook
• Belgium Update
• France Update
• United Kingdom Update
• Netherlands Update
• Spain Update
• European Union Update
• Funding ideas: European Science Foundation
• Funding ideas: National Science Foundation, full text of call for proposals
• Possible conference series

Comparative Studies of Policy Agendas. Journal of European Public Policy 7, 13 (September 2006) Click here to see the table of contents and to read the papers. The papers will also be published in 2007 as an edited book by Routledge.

Notes on comparative replications

One of the most difficult aspects of the comparative projects is to determine which indicators of government activity are most relevant. For example, there are often no equivalents of congressional hearings in many countries, but parliamentary questions may play a similar role. On the other hand, legislation is used in each country, executive orders may be present in the same manner, and certainly media coverage is a relevant input in all countries. In any case, different indicators may be used for different countries, and some country projects are more extensive than others, or are further along in their data collection process.

A second issue is to make a topic coding system that is as comparable to the US system as possible so that the results can be compared, but which also corresponds to the different types of activities that are undertaken in various countries. So the topic codebooks need to be revised to some extent in each country. For example, the US topic coding system contains some elements, such as dealing with water rights for American indian tribes, that have no equivalent in Europe; similarly many European systems include review of national health care systems that have no equivalent in the US.

As of June 2006, comparative policy agendas projects are underway in Denmark, France, England, Belgium, Canada, the European Union, and for the State of Pennsylvania. Each project is slightly different for the reasons noted above. Note that the Belgian project, directed by Stefaan Walgrave, was developed independently of the US project and its topic coding system is not as closely linked with the US version as would be preferable. We are working together to make a revised version that will be as comparable as possible. Projects are in the planning stages for Spain and Switzerland. We hope that more agendas projects will be added for different US states and other countries in the future.

As these projects are not equally far advanced, this page is designed mostly to allow colleagues to compare their project with those in other countries at this stage. When the projects are closer to completion, we will make a more substantial web site allowing people to link directly to the underlying data and to analyze it through the Policy Agendas website. Users interested in using the data should go directly to the various project web sites. If there is no such web site available yet it means that the projects are not yet complete or ready to release the deata. In all cases the data will, of course, be released when complete. I have included links here to each web site that is available as of yet, and in all cases to the main contact person / principal investigator.