A Study On The Pattern Of Focus Events Triggering Policy Agenda

The setting of policy agenda is the starting point of the public policy process,which determines which public issues are constructed as policy issues and incorporated into the government’s action plan.It reflects the policy tendency and value orientation of decision makers and all levels of society in a period of time,and plays an important role of foundation and guidance.In recent years,the rapid development of the Internet has provided diversified channels and stable activity platforms for diversified subjects to express their interest demands.Relying on the power of network new media,the focus events affecting policy agenda setting are increasing day by day.Focus events have gradually changed from special circumstances in the process of policy agenda setting to a regular trigger mode.As an important way to trigger the policy agenda,focus events have attracted extensive attention in the academic community.However,at present,the analysis framework applied in China is relatively single,which is too limited to the western policy agenda setting theory.Most scholars focus on the use of John Kingdon’s Multiple-Streams theory to analyze the process of a single focus event case triggering the relevant policy agenda setting.Therefore,this paper tries to use the Actor-Network theory in the field of sociology to analyze the conditional path combination and model of multi-focus events triggering policy agenda setting.Actor-Network theory can be used to explain the interaction of multiple agents in the process of setting policy agenda,and can be applied to the research of triggering policy agenda by focus events.By combining Actor-Network theory and Multiple-Streams theory,it is proposed that in the development process of focus events,actors such as the government,the public,media,and opinion leaders form an actor network.After the translation process of problem presentation,benefit granting,recruiting members,and mobilization,the policy agenda was finally successfully triggered.Under the guidance of the theoretical framework,this paper takes 40 representative focus events from 2015 to 2021 as research cases,and abstracts seven influencing factors,such as policy absence and public opinion superposition.Using qualitative comparative analysis,this paper explores the combination path of different conditions for the focus event to trigger the policy agenda.The results show that triggering the policy agenda requires the joint participation of multiple actors,and media interaction is a necessary factor to trigger the policy agenda.The risk,controversy and fuzziness of policy issues are important factors affecting the failure of focus events.Through in-depth model analysis of the combination of the three conditional paths,it is concluded that the three models that focus events trigger the policy agenda are the "Authority-accountability" model,the "Pressure-response" model,and the "Mutual benefit-learning" model.The advantages and disadvantages of the three models are analyzed.Finally,according to the defects of the three modes,the optimization strategies of different modes of policy agenda triggered by focus events are proposed.For the "Authority-accountability" model,the interaction between multiple subjects should be strengthened;for the "Pressure-response" model,it is necessary to cultivate rational multiple actors;for the "Mutual benefit-learning" model,the environment for setting policy agendas should be optimized.