During the 105th Congress, legislators held 1,187 recorded votes and passed 710 pieces of legislation (Ornstein et al. 2002). Even after accounting for routine and symbolic legislation, this legislative workload encompassed an overwhelming number of interrelated issues. Other recent congresses have borne similar workloads (Ornstein et al. 2002). In order to impose some order on this legislative mass of interrelated issues, legislators regularly endow their leaders with agenda-setting powers (Aldrich 1995). In turn, the leaders work to steer the legislative agenda toward issues favoring their parties' policy and electoral interests (Cox and McCubbins 2004, Jacobs et al. 2002). If rank-and-file members join their leaders in publicly promoting a particular issue and argument, that message is more likely to influence and persuade other members inside Congress and the news media and public outside Congress. The result is increased pressure for legislative action on the issue and policy position advocated in the message.

This chapter develops a framework for capturing these dynamics of agenda setting, particularly the roles of strategic communication and the news media. The first section discusses different ways to capture politicians' behavior and preferences about policy agendas. In the next section, I introduce four policy debates that provide and structure much of the subsequent evidence in this book. The final section of the chapter draws out unanswered questions that emerge from the debates. The remainder of the book uses evidence from the debates to address these questions.