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Initiate and Elevate! How Political Parties Can Set an Agenda

Daniel Sandvej Eriksen

American Political Science Review2026https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055426101506article
AJG 4*ABDC A*
Weight
0.50

Abstract

The study of political agenda setting is a cornerstone in political science. Within this literature, political parties are implicitly portrayed as being capable of proactively initiating discussions. However, this fundamental notion of party agency deserves further theoretical and empirical attention. In response, this article crafts a new model (the Issue Initiation Model) that opens the window into parties’ efforts to set an agenda and traces how they initiate and elevate their agenda. The model is tested on an original dataset covering more than 5.5-million tweets by political parties and MPs, coupled with over 750,000 news articles and 419,000 parliamentary questions in the United Kingdom and Denmark from 2015 to 2022. Results show how parties and their MPs can proactively redirect the attention of other actors through strategic planning and orchestrated actions. By theorizing and empirically testing the implicit notion that parties can proactively initiate discussions, this article has important implications for political agenda setting.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055426101506

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@article{daniel2026,
  title        = {{Initiate and Elevate! How Political Parties Can Set an Agenda}},
  author       = {Daniel Sandvej Eriksen},
  journal      = {American Political Science Review},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055426101506},
}

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Initiate and Elevate! How Political Parties Can Set an Agenda

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.