399 Offering Issues

So imagine that you are a farmer who grows organic vegetables. You are also an organic farmer, but that is another story. You want to sell your vegetables to a local vegetarian restaurant. You need to offer to sell them to the restaurant and the restaurant needs to, for reasons of its own, buy the vegetables.

That describes the interface between the politicization of an issue, the last phase of the political psychology process, and the agenda acquisition, which is the first phase of the public policy process. People who bring issues to the political system--who petition the school board, or who have a talk with the division chair or the dean of the College of Urban and Public Affairs, who contact their representatives about bills the Oregon State Legislature might consider, etc.--are offering the fruit of their own reflection. They may be grievances or solutions or special advantages. When you have offered them to a political system, you have become "a policy entrepreneur."

The next question is whether there is room on the agenda. Will the legislature or the school board or the dean make a place for your proposal on the agenda? Always, there are reasons why they might not want to. There are many items on the agenda already and time is always short. This new proposal might disadvantage someone who matters to the "gatekeepers," the people who say what makes it to the agenda and what does not.

Politicization, in any case, is the process of making an issue relevant to a government. If it calls on their authority or their competitive advantage or their funding mechanism or the urgent need for a regulation of some sort, you have politicized the issue. Congratulations.