December 16, 2010 Reviewed by: Eleanor E. Zeff
Agenda-Setting in the European Union by Sebastiaan Princen is a book in the series of Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics edited by Michelle Egan, Neill Nugent and William Patterson and published by Palgrave/MacMillan, a global academic publisher. Traditionally, agenda-setting has contributed an important element to the study of policy making in general. In this book, Princen isolates and analyzes the agenda setting processes used in the European Union (EU) in order to shed new light on European integration and on EU policy-making. He then compares EU to United States (US) agendasetting in the areas of health and environmental policies. By theoretically examining how issues of concern to the EU get on its political agenda, and comparing those issues with policy agendas in the United States, Princen presents a fresh explanation for European integration and a more optimistic view of democracy in the EU.