Abstract
This paper aims to explore the role of political parties in the agenda-setting in the context of Multiple streams approach (MSA), and thus to contribute to its theoretical development. MSA is nowadays a rapidly advancing framework of policy process study that has the conception of agenda-setting in its hearth.
It considers this stage as a question of how attention is rationed. MSA argues that attention is scarce and that attention to a particular issue is a function of opportunity, bias, formal position in an organization, and the number of issues competing for decision-maker attention (Zahariadis 2014: 36).
It also argues that decision-makers' attention is affected by institutional structure, the type of opened policy window, and the symbols used to attract attention (ibid.). Recently, MSA pays more attention to political parties because they play an important role in the policy process in liberal democracies, especially in Europe.
Political parties are not considered only as unitary collective actors but also as one of policy process arenas linking the society and the state. Therefore, the paper will first discuss political parties, agenda-setting and MSA relations in the existing MSA and agenda-setting literature.
Then, it will identify theoretical gaps and formulate proposals of theory amendments and its further development. Especially, it will consider political parties' organization and possible spillovers from the cartel party theory (Katz and Mair) and the integrated theory of party goals and change (Harmel and Janda).
Empirically, it will be complemented by the case of contemporary Czech parliamentary parties.