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7 Most early works on the subject began from the assumption that socio-economic conditions led to particular sets of problems to which governments eventually responded. See Sharkansky, Ira, “Constraints on Innovation in Policy Making: Economic Development and Political Routines,” in Frank, Marini, ed., Toward a New Public Administration: The Minnowbrook Perspective (Scranton: Chandler, 1971), 261–79Google Scholar; Aaron, H. J., “Social Security: International Comparison,” in Eckstein, O., ed., Studies in the Economics of Income Maintenance (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1967), 13–49Google Scholar; Pryor, F. L., Public Expenditures in Communist and Capitalist Nations (Homewood, Ill.: R. D. Irwin, 1968); andGoogle ScholarWilensky, H. L., The Welfare State and Equality: Structural and Ideological Roots of Public Expenditures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975)Google Scholar. This “response theory” soon proved unsatisfactory for a variety of reasons, not the least of which related to its tendency to overstate the influence of either governments or their public in driving the agenda-setting process, to the neglect of a subtler understanding of how these actors related to each other and the manner in which interpretations of policy problems were constructed. See Berger, Peter L. and Luckmann, Thomas, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Doubleday, 1966)Google Scholar; and Spector, Malcolm and Kitsuse, John I., Constructing Social Problems (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1987).Google Scholar

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13 Ibid., 42.

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18 Baumgartner and Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics, 88.

19 Ibid., 89.

20 Ibid., 18.

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25 Ibid., 252.

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27 Bosso, Christopher J., “Setting the Agenda: Mass Media and the Discovery of Famine in Ethiopia,” in Margolis, M. and Mauser, G. A., eds., Manipulating Public Opinion: Essays on Public Opinion as a Dependent Variable (Pacific Grove: Brooks/Cole, 1989), 153–74Google Scholar. This does not presuppose that Downs's characterization of the role of the media in the policy process is correct. On this, see Cook, F. L. et al., “Media and Agenda Setting: Effects on the Public, Interest Group Leaders, Policy Makers, and Policy,” Public Opinion Quarterly 47 (1983), 16–35CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Erbring, Lutz and Goldenberg, Edie N., “Front Page News and Real World Cues: A New Look at Agenda-Setting by the Media,” American Journal of Political Science 24 (1980), 16–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and McCombs, Maxwell E., “The Agenda-Setting Approach,” in Nimmo, D. D. and Sanders, K. R., eds., Handbook of Political Communication (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1981), 121–40.Google Scholar

28 CBCA is the major electronic index for Canadian newspapers, popular and business magazines, and scholarly journals, and is equivalent to the Canadian Index, formerly the Canadian Business Index, Canadian News Index and Canadian Magazine Index. CBCA provides comprehensive coverage of Canadian topics, including the arts, business, politics, literature, history and news events, from 1982 to the present.

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34 Ibid., Appendix B, 269–72.

35 Ibid., Appendix B, 270.

36 Ibid., 244–45.

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38 Using the SPECTRA Procedure from SPSS TRENDS, these figures plot magnitude or density against frequency on a logarithmic scale. See SPSS TRENDS 6.1 (Chicago: SPSS Inc., 1994).

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