Agenda settings in public policy

As society we live in today is evolving very quickly, it has become more complex and more difficult to cope with problems that stem from society's fluctuating social conditions. Since problems related to the society are complicated and interactive in nature, they influence other members of the society in a way that requires an immediate governmental action. According to Kingdon (2003), agenda is a list of public issues which are given a close importance by people and tried to gain the attention of governmental officials at any given time. By approaching from the political perspective, Shafritz and his friends (2005) defines agenda setting as an interactive process in which ideas or important issues are gathered by society through using a number of political channels in order to catch the attention of both official and unofficial political figures such as courts, mass media and legislative branch. Agenda setting process includes three very important streams of activity which provide enough room to open policy windows. These policy windows present an opportunity for public entrepreneurs to couple and bring their social issues on to the institutional agenda status (Kingdon, 2003). At an even more complex level of analysis, firearms policy reflects cultural, normative structural forces that are shared with other visible systemic policies. Although opponents have not kept the issue entirely off the agenda, they have been able to restrict the options considered and impact implementation strategies.