This article was downloaded by: [University of Zimbabwe]

On: 13 June 2015, At: 00:19

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number:
1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street,
London W1T 3JH, UK

Policy Studies
Publication details, including instructions for
authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cpos20

Agenda Setting and Problem

Definition
David Dery
Published online: 19 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: David Dery (2000) Agenda Setting and Problem Definition,
Policy Studies, 21:1, 37-47, DOI: 10.1080/014428700114008

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/014428700114008

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all
the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our
platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors
make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy,
completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of
the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis.
The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be
independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and
Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings,
demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever
or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in
relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study
purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution,
reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any
form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access
 and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-
conditions
Downloaded by [University of Zimbabwe] at 00:19 13 June 2015
 Policy Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2000

Agenda Setting and Problem DeŽ nition

DAVID DERY

ABSTRACT What happens after public issues attain agenda status? Exploring this question in the
context of one instance of social protest in Israel, the 1990 ‘tents movement’, this paper focuses on govern-
ment reaction and the way it successfully disintegrated the movement. A movement that proved strong
Downloaded by [University of Zimbabwe] at 00:19 13 June 2015

enough to put the housing problem on the national agenda, and to keep it there for a few months, has
had no inuence on the subsequent treatment of this issue. Apparently, to legitimize an issue is not the
same as to legitimize demands. This hypothesis is examined in a broader conceptual context, distin-
guishing between agenda setting and problem deŽnition. This distinction, in turn, calls into attention
the power of initial deŽnitions of problems, and the mechanisms employed by guardians of the status quo.

Introduction
Experienced policy entrepreneurs know that today’s newspaper headlines may well become
tomorrow’s Ž sh wrappings. Anticipating agenda-setting theory, veteran protesters view media
coverage not as an end, but as a means to put their claims on the agenda. Cobb and Ross
(1997, p.3) characterize agenda setting as ‘the politics of selecting issues for active consider-
ation’. But what happens after issues gain agenda status, that is, become part of ‘that set of
items explicitly up for the active and serious consideration of authoritative decision makers’
(Cobb and Elder, 1983, p.86)? Would it be useful to distinguish strictly between processes
that are at work before issues gain agenda status and those that enter the scene afterwards?
An expansive view of agenda setting blurs the line between agenda setting and problem deŽ -
nition: ‘Agenda con icts are not just about what issues government chooses to act on; they
are also about competing interpretations of political problems and the alternative worldviews
that underlie them’ (Cobb and Ross, 1997, pp.3–4). Agenda setting, Birkland similarly sug-
gests (1997, p.11), is ‘the result of a society acting through political and social institutions to
deŽ ne the meanings of problems and the range of acceptable solutions’. A likewise expan-
sive outlook on problem deŽ nition has a similar effect: ‘Problem deŽ nition has to do with
what we choose to identify as public issues and how we think and talk about these concerns’
(Rochefort and Cobb, 1994, p.vii).
In contrast to this blurring of boundary lines, Weiss (1989, p.118) draws a clear distinc-
tion between the two: ‘Problem deŽ nition is related to, but different from, agenda setting.
Problem deŽ nition is concerned with the organization of a set of facts, beliefs, and percep-
tions – how people think about circumstances. Agenda setting refers to the process by which
some problems come to public attention at given times and places’ (1989: 118). Baumgart-
ner and Jones (1993, pp.28–9) likewise recognize that, ‘Raising a problem to the public
agenda does not imply any particular solution [. . .] The trick for a policy entrepreneur is to
ensure that the solution he or she favors is adopted once a given problem has emerged on

David Dery, Political Science Department, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem,
91950, Israel. E-mail: der yda@vms.huji.ac.il

ISSN 0144-2872 print/1470-1006 online /00/010037–11 © 2000 Policy Studies Institute

 38 David Dery

the national agenda’. Although the way an issue gains agenda status may in uence how it is
subsequently deŽ ned as a policy problem, this is but one conceivable in uence whose force
is a matter not of deŽ nition but of empirical investigation.
To explore the relationship between agenda setting and problem deŽ nition, this paper
examines the tents protest movement that took place in Israel from June 1990 to January
1991. The magnitude of this movement, its duration, and demanding character seem to have
had no precedent in Israeli histor y of social protest. The tents movement, or rather the simul-
taneous seeking of housing solutions in tent camps by hundreds of families, erupted in mid-
June 1990 and reached its peak about six weeks later, with over 2000 families living in tent
camps across the countr y. Towards the beginning of the school year in September 1990, and
the arrival of the High Holidays, when winter gave its Ž rst signs of approach, and Saddam
Hussein threatened to blow up half of Israel, the movement showed signs of gradual evapo-
ration. Yet, only after the Ž rst Scud missile attack on Israel (18 January 1991) were hundreds
of families persuaded to evacuate the tent camps for temporar y, albeit better, sheltered
Downloaded by [University of Zimbabwe] at 00:19 13 June 2015

housing units and hotel rooms.

This story, however, is not primarily about a ‘game against nature’. Although signiŽ cantly
aided by external forces, government has had much to do with the evaporation and eventual
termination of the tent movement. Having initially failed to deny agenda access (Cobb and
Ross, 1997) to the housing issue, the Israeli government secured an impressive victor y when
it came to the problem deŽ nition phase. It successfully translated a broad social concern into
a narrowly deŽ ned policy problem, thereby expropriating the topic from the protest move-
ment and contributing to the movement’s disintegration. The advantage the tent protest
group has had in the initial stage, of agenda-setting, to some extent through ‘issue expan-
sion’, vanished as soon as the objective of gaining ‘active and serious consideration of authori-
tative decision makers’ was achieved.
The hypothesis I wish to explore with the help of this case study is that legitimizing an
issue is not the same as legitimizing demands. To the extent that this is true for any mass
protest, then the role of democratic participation in public policy-making would appear more
restricted than that normally envisioned due to its hypothesized in uence on agenda setting.
Furthermore, agenda access is not the goal but potentially a means to advance one’s cause.
If so, we need to be aware of the possibility that variables that enhance the likelihood of
agenda success (eg issue expansion) may become a hindrance at the crucial stage of problem
deŽ nition (eg a broad but hard to mobilize coalition). An explicit distinction between agenda
setting and problem deŽ nition would seem warranted to better guide our observation and
enhance our sensitivity to the forces that are at play after public concerns and demands are
recognized as deserving government consideration.

Continuity and Change

In an engaging and inspiring collection of essays, Albert O. Hirschman advises us to respect
the unpredictability of change and the way it tends to arise out of unique constellations (1995:
136); elsewhere he alludes to ‘unlikely combinations of favorable circumstances’ (1992: 174)
and suggests that ‘histor y is nothing if not farfetched’. If we accept this view, it would then
seem that neither change nor continuity is a worthy object of inquiry; change due to its
unpredictable and idiosyncratic nature, and continuity due to its expected presence. Con-
siderably more helpful is Hirschman’s hypothesis that ‘change can only happen as a result
of surprise, otherwise it could not occur at all, for it would be suppressed by the forces that
are in favor of the status quo’ (1995: 136). Here, continuity is not simply given but wilfully
maintained. The work of these forces, that do not seem to take for granted the improbabil-
ity of change, is the focus of the present inquiry.
 Agenda Setting and Problem DeŽnition 39

As clearly postulated in control theory (Marken, 1990), the forces in favour of the status
quo themselves need to change so as to achieve Ž xed results in an inconsistent or uncoop-
erative environment. This is the underlying idea in the cybernetic model of decision making
(see Steinbruner, 1974), and a similar notion has been depicted as ‘single-loop learning’
(Argyris, 1977), ie learning within the framework of a given set of underlying premises, rather
than challenging these premises. To successfully maintain the status quo, these forces must
possess some capacity to learn and adapt (see Hedberg, 1981; Deutsch, 1975; Argyris and
Schon, 1996). What mechanisms do guardians of the status quo employ? The case study exam-
ined in this paper discloses one such mechanism: ‘localization’ of policy problems. By grant-
ing Ž eld ofŽ cers increased discretion, and by enriching the repertoire of available responses,
government seems able to effect actual change in policy outcome (for the people directly
concerned) without changing overall policy. Interestingly enough, the crucial role of pro-
fessional Ž eld ofŽ cers in making or delivering pubic policy is well recognized in their capac-
ity as ‘street-level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky, 1980), but the hypothesized resulting blockage of
Downloaded by [University of Zimbabwe] at 00:19 13 June 2015

fundamental change may have escaped our attention.

Agenda Setting
Where do new policies come from? Two main sets of explanations have been advanced in the
literature; following Majone (1989, p.148), they are the ‘technocratic’ and ‘political’ models.
The technocratic model explains policy change as the result of policymakers changing their
preferences and adapting their goals to new conditions. Learning is part and parcel of the
policy process (or cycle), in which policy evaluation follows implementation and precedes
correction and termination (Anderson, 1976; May and Wildavsky, 1978; Brewer and deLeon,
1983). Policy innovations are, in a similar vein, the product of evolutionar y policy making
where policies are seen as hypotheses, or theories, and implementation as the actual testing
of policy theories (Pressman and Wildavsky, 1984; Majone, 1980; Bennis, 1966; Landau,
1973). The technocratic model recognizes that non-incremental and discontinuous policies
are from time to time adopted, but these are the exception rather than the rule, and are
better treated by the political model.
The political model, basically seeking to explain policy development as the result of
changes in the conŽ guration of dominant interests, pursues two main lines of inquiry. One
employs the notion of political innovation (Polsby, 1984), the other seeks to provide answers
by focusing on agenda setting (Cobb and Elder, 1983; Kingdon, 1984; Baumgartner and
Jones, 1993). Both lines of inquiry share the somewhat implicit understanding that policy
innovations are the product of the marriage between power and (otherwise sterile) ideas.
Polsby has shown how the routines of politics (eg the yearly budgetar y process, or holding
elections for public ofŽ ce), an unexpected source of freshness, can account for the rise of
new policy ideas. Presumably, people seek political ofŽ ce so as to introduce new ideas and
innovative solutions, and if elected, they can use the power of their ofŽ ce to in uence public
policy. Secondly, Polsby’s hypothesis on the role of crisis in policy innovations seems to con-
verge with the central tenet of agenda-setting theor y, namely wide public support as a pre-
requisite for gaining agenda status.
Nonetheless, the fact that a given issue has gained agenda status merely tells us that there
might, then, exist a ‘policy window’, ‘an opportunity for action’ (Kingdon, 1984); it does not
disclose how that issue is likely to be handled, eg de novo, or through existing programmes
and procedures. It would thus seem that the political process does one thing when it deter-
mines whether or not an expressed public concern (eg sharp increase in rent prices) is an
issue that deserves government attention, and quite another when it determines how the
same issue will be conceptualized and how subsequent action, or inaction, may be legitimized.
 40 David Dery

This is where we need the notion of problem deŽ nition, for it immediately captures the power
of existing, often institutionalized, deŽ nitions (Dery, 1984a; Reich, 1988).

Problem DeŽnition
In the context of policy analysis, the notion of problem deŽ nition, or problem setting, has
long been instituted as the most crucial and demanding task facing the analyst (Bardach,
1996). But the different task of conceptualizing problem deŽ nition as a political process has
attracted little attention (Rochefort and Cobb, 1994). The Ž rst maxim of problem deŽ -
nition is the recognition that problems do not exist ‘out there’, are not objectives entities in
their own right, but are analytic constructs, or conceptual entities (Rein and Schon, 1977;
Wildavsky, 1979; Lindblom and Cohen, 1979; Schon, 1983; Der y, 1984a; Dunn, 1988; Weiss,
1989; Weick, 1995). The second maxim suggests that deŽ nitions of problems in the context
of practice must answer the criteria of feasibility and worth, or improvement. Thus policy
Downloaded by [University of Zimbabwe] at 00:19 13 June 2015

analysis is deŽ ned as ‘creating and crafting problems worth solving’ (Wildavsky, 1979, p.389).
In policy analysis, problems are analytic constructs, in politics they are political constructs.
In policy analysis the construct or deŽ nition proposed by an analyst is one of many inputs to
a political process. In politics what is recognized or legitimized as the appropriate deŽ nition
of a given problem is the product of the political process. But despite the differences, the
concept of problems as constructs rather than givens, and the understanding that deŽ nitions
of problems must embody ‘opportunities for improvement’ (Der y, 1984a) holds, whether
problem deŽ nition is an input to a political process or its product. If so, then ‘selecting issues
for active consideration’, which is the essence of agenda setting, must be clearly differenti-
ated from the political process of problem deŽ nition. ‘Poverty’, ‘illegal immigration’, ‘crime’,
‘health insurance coverage’, ‘nuclear safety’, are examples of suitable answers to the ques-
tion: ‘Which issues are on the agenda?’, but such answers do not reveal the slightest hint on
how these issues are deŽ ned. Problem deŽ nition answers a different question, concerning
‘the decision to be made, the ends to be achieved, the means which may be chosen’ (Schon,
1983, p.40). But while the analyst engages in ‘search, creation and initial examination of
opportunities for improvement’ (Dery, 1984a), political actors seek to ‘sell’ the deŽ nition
each favours and to in uence the deŽ nition which will eventually emerge from the political
process. Thus Stone (1988, p.106) understands problem deŽ nition in the political context as
‘the strategic representation of situations’, representations that are ‘constructed to win the
most people to one’s side and the most leverage over one’s opponents’. According to Reich,
‘the most important aspect of political discourse is not the appraisal of alternative solutions
to our problems, but the deŽ nition of the problems themselves’ (Reich, 1988: 5).
The context within which housing policy in Israel is debated and executed was established
in the early 1970s and has been successfully maintained against opposition ever since. In the
case study that follows, my attempt is to examine closely the way government has dealt with
a signiŽ cant challenge to existing policy posed by mass protest. The fact that the housing
problem in this case was largely generated by government – ie its decision to assist newcom-
ers with cash transfers at levels higher than earlier market prices – adds a touch of irony to
this story. If the despair of the people is a direct outcome of government intervention in the
market, one might expect to Ž nd a government that is more responsive than usual. But this
causal story (Stone, 1988, Chapter 8) proved less successful than government’s urge to
defend the status quo.
 Agenda Setting and Problem DeŽnition 41
The Tents Protest

Background
The idea of tent protest can be attributed to one family in a small upper Galilee town, who
in the beginning of June 1990 pitched a tent outside city hall. This way of solving the family’s
housing problem and protesting against a desperate Ž nancial situation was reported in a tele-
vision programme and was quickly adopted by many people throughout the country. In the
years immediately preceding this spontaneous outburst of the so-called ‘tents protest’, or
‘Ma’abarot’,1 government aid to young couples lost much of its purchasing power. Low-
income groups were Ž rst to suffer. To purchase an apartment, eligible young couples had to
cover from their own resources some two-thirds of the price of a two-bedroom apartment, or
the equivalent of US$40–60,000 (see Friedman, 1988; Gayer, 1991). As the number of poten-
tial buyers declined, construction companies built fewer apartments than before, causing a
Downloaded by [University of Zimbabwe] at 00:19 13 June 2015

rise in the demand for housing rentals.

Furthermore, the housing market was unprepared for the wave of immigration from the
former Soviet Union. During 1990 some 200,000 immigrants arrived in Israel, more than the
total number of immigrants arriving throughout the past decade. Rents in the housing
market rocketed due to a shared perception of an upcoming housing crisis, but also due to
government intervention in the housing market. Government support to the new immigrants
included a signiŽ cant sum of money earmarked to rent payments, thus in effect instituting a
minimum rent that was almost twice as high as the going rent for middle and low income
housing units. Landlords, moreover, adjusted the rental conditions in keeping with the rental
power of new immigrants and demanded a twelve-month rent in advance. Given this ‘per-
verse effect’ of government intervention in the market (see Hirschman, 1992; 1995, Chapter
2) one could argue that this is an area where government should feel particularly respons-
ible (see Stone, 1988). However, the government primarily sought to defend its policy of pref-
erential treatment to new immigrants (regardless of their economic status) and means-tested
relief to veteran citizens. This policy has long been the source of social unrest, particularly
in periods of mass immigration to Israel.
The idea of a tent solution-protest spread rapidly. The protest in the city of Rishon LeZion
started with a stand to collect signatures on behalf of ‘rent victims’ (who could not compete
with the rental payments the new immigrants could offer). Soon, a group of ‘mortgage
victims’ joined the encampment as well as other young couples who could not pay the rent
out of their salaries. In ten days the seeds of this protest turned into an encampment of 57
families. In less than a month, the country was Ž lled with camps of self-declared ‘homeless’.
At the beginning of August 1990, 1845 families populated 59 encampments in 42 towns
throughout the countr y. The protest reached its height two weeks later, when over 2000
families lived in approximately 70 encampments.

Riding the Big Wave

For some of the families who joined the encampments, the tent was a housing solution. The
alternative to living in a tent was either a monthly rent, which consumed the greater part of
salary, or living with parents. For others who didn’t have an immediate housing problem,
moving into tent camps was an ‘investment’: staking a claim on a tent, in the event that they
did not Ž nd another solution, or if government were to give in and distribute apartments or
other solutions to tent residents. A few camps were led by the organization of ‘mortgage
victims’. In the great majority of the encampments, neighbourhood and political activists tra-
ditionally associated with social welfare issues were dominant. They joined the tents to lead
 42 David Dery

and fuel the protest, and to represent their respective political movements. The feeling was
that the wave of immigration from Russia represented a one-time opportunity to Ž nd sol-
utions to a host of housing-related problems. The tent protest was for all those involved, ‘rent-
victims’, ‘mortgage victims’, neighbourhood and political activists – an attempt to ‘ride the
big wave’.
Unable to in uence the public agenda, claimants tend to tie their demands to issues that
are already there. A symposium on ‘Agenda Setting, Public Policy, and Minority Group In u-
ence’ (McClain, 1990) demonstrated again the limited access of minority groups to the public
agenda. Kingdon’s portrayal of solution holders as ‘waiting for problems to  oat by to which
they can attach their solutions’ (1984, p.173), equally pertains to people who seek to advance
their cause. ‘We didn’t create the wave,’ explains a Jerusalem City Council member and
leader of Ma’aberet HaKnesset (literally, ‘the Knesset transit camp’, located in the Valley of
the Cross), ‘but if it gives us the opportunity to advance our cause, why not ride it?’ Riding
the homeless wave provided political activists with an opportunity to demonstrate to the
Downloaded by [University of Zimbabwe] at 00:19 13 June 2015

public and to political sponsors that they were capable of riding the wave, and of steering it.

Protest and Anarchy

The burden of dealing with the homeless encampments fell for the most part on local author-
ities. The initial reaction of the mayors was usually negative. They saw these incidents as dis-
ruptions and called for, or threatened, police intervention. Given that public policy in Israel
is by and large shaped at the national level, whereas government ministries normally regard
local authorities as ‘sub-contractors’ on their behalf (Dery and Schwartz-Milner, 1994), there
was little else they could do. In the second stage, the mayors accepted the encampments.
Instead of heading the struggle of central government against the encampments, an opera-
tion for which they were unequipped, the mayors turned the struggle over to the government
in Jerusalem. The hostile stance toward the encampments was quickly replaced by a munici-
pal policy designed to help the residents carry on daily activities necessar y to their livelihood.
This active assistance, including the supplying of tents, water, electricity, garbage collection,
and bathing facilities, was provided as a gesture of good will. In return, local authorities
insisted that residents refrain from violent acts and illegal housing construction. ‘Your protest
is welcomed up to a point, but past that point it’s anarchy,’ said the mayor of Herzelia
(Haaretz, 19 July, 1990). A similar position was voiced by the mayor of Tel Aviv: ‘I identify with
the homeless and the municipality is helping them with basic necessities, but we will, under
no circumstances, give a helping hand to the erection of illegal buildings and the taking over
of public grounds’ (Haaretz, 3 August, 1990).
Nevertheless, in order to compete for government attention and to win a place on the
agenda, there was a need to escalate the protest. As Lipsky (1968) showed, the competition
for government attention is carried out through the media (see Wolsfeld, 1984; 1988). In
this competition, the tent settlers received considerable press coverage by supplying ‘news-
worthy material’, until violent demonstrations and suicide threats became routine and were
overshadowed by other events, particularly the developments in the Persian Gulf.
In the second week of July, there were violent protests by the homeless in Jerusalem and
other cities. Hundreds of demonstrators participated in disturbances, closed off main roads,
attacked and wrestled with policemen, and smashed the windshields of police cars. The
violent struggle of the camp settlers spread to include suicide attempts, various threats of
‘exit’ (e.g. returning of identity cards and Army Reserve papers, appeals to foreign con-
sulates, see Hirschman, 1970), demonstrations, blocking of trafŽ c, breaking into apartments
and public buildings, burning tyres and rubbish bins, and hunger strikes. Residents in the
Bat-Yam encampment provided a somewhat extreme example of violent behaviour. Seventy
 Agenda Setting and Problem DeŽnition 43

demonstrators gathered on the roof of the municipality building and threatened to commit
suicide if the Housing Minister would not come and meet them. During the demonstration,
two Molotov cocktails were thrown. The demonstrators declared that they were armed with
Ž rebombs, gas canisters, and tyres. ‘For three weeks we’ve been here and nobody’s come,’
explained the spokesman (Haaretz, 19 July, 1990).
During the month of July 1990, Knesset Member Michael Eitan conducted a series of visits
to the homeless encampments on behalf of Mr Sharon, the Minister of Housing and
Construction. In his report to Minister Sharon, Eitan stated that a delay in Ž nding housing
solutions to part of the encampment occupants might well lead to outbreaks that would bring
catastrophe. According to Eitan, ‘The moderate leadership is losing restraint, and a militant
leadership is replacing it’ (Haaretz, 31 July, 1990). Prime Minister Shamir asked the home-
less to be patient and not to give in to violent provocation (Haaretz, 23 July, 1990). The police,
who until then had practised restraint, decided to press charges for unlawful gathering. The
Minister of Police stated that, ‘Despite the understandably severe distress of the homeless,
Downloaded by [University of Zimbabwe] at 00:19 13 June 2015

they must understand that their protest, however painful, must be kept within the bound-
aries of the law, to preserve public order and normalcy within the state’ (Haaretz, 1 August,
1990).
At the end of July 1990, the residents of the Rose Garden tent camp in Jerusalem broke
into the Absorption Center (for new immigrants) in the neighbourhood of Gilo. The squat-
ters found in the Center many vacant apartments that needed considerable repair work, and
were considered unŽ t for living. The Jewish Agency, which is responsible for this Absorption
Center, and the Housing Ministry gave in and decided to allocate the vacant apartments in
the Center to the homeless, but insisted that the apartments be given only to those eligible
according to the accepted criteria, not to law-breakers. They demanded that the squatters
leave the area and registered a complaint with the police. Yet despite this initial reaction, an
agreement developed through which the Absorption Center provided housing solutions to
97 squatter families.
Soon came a plan to whitewash the illegal break-in. The instruction given from ministerial
level was ‘to legitimize, Ž nd a way’. It was clear that ‘no minister would go and forcibly evacu-
ate 100 families’, explained a senior ofŽ cial, and a way was found: squatters with eligibility
documents were offered a rental contract. Couples with no children were asked to vacate the
larger apartments on behalf of families with children and were housed, legally, in smaller
apartments. ‘Crime pays,’ concluded a senior ofŽ cial in the Housing Ministr y. Studying the
politics of provocation in Israel, Wolsfeld commented: ‘Despite the fact that a signiŽ cant
number of [protest] groups carry out acts which are illegal or violent, few suffer any conse-
quences. The authorities have contributed to the spread of cynicism by making “deals” with
protest leaders to ensure peace’ (1988, p.163).

Stretching and Bending Eligibility Criteria

The tolerance toward the squatters was consistent with the overall policy of stretching and
bending eligibility criteria so as to individualize the protest and lead to its disintegration. The
tension between participation in a social protest and addressing personal concerns was the
key to the dissolution of the tent protest. Government intervention on the individual level,
offering immediate aid to the eligible, created a con ict between the interests of the indi-
vidual family seeking relief, and those of the protest leaders who sought a more meaningful
victor y, basically the recognition of a right to decent housing for all. Tangible ‘solutions’ to
the needy overpowered the idea of social protest and policy reform. The protest ingredient
in the tent movement soon disappeared, leaving the scene free for negotiations and deals
between tent residents and government ofŽ cials on the terms for each family’s evacuation.
 44 David Dery

The report that Knesset Member Michael Eitan submitted to the Housing Minister deter-
mined to a large extent the line of treatment of the protest by the administration. In the
report, Eitan recommended acting Ž rst to Ž nd immediate solutions for the homeless who
suffered from additional troubles, not the ‘net homeless’. The instruction administrators
received from the political level was to ‘liquidate the tents’, that is, without changing its
overall policy of preferential treatment to new immigrants and means-tested help to veteran
citizens. The working assumption was that treatment on a family-by-family basis would bring
the movement to an end. The movement’s leadership foresaw this, but their in uence on
their followers ceased as soon as housing solutions for the eligible were proposed. ‘The
government injected poison into the camps,’ said one leader. This ‘poison’ individualized
the protest movement and turned it into a crowd of families seeking immediate relief.
In Jerusalem, the Deputy Director General of Prazot (a public housing company for the
needy, jointly owned by the government of Israel and the City of Jerusalem) was appointed
to the position of ‘Head of the team for dealing with the tents’. Prazot’s ongoing tasks had
Downloaded by [University of Zimbabwe] at 00:19 13 June 2015

to do with the housing problems of needy families that required special treatment, beyond
the standard mortgage subsidy given to young couples. Thus the message conveyed in this
assignment of the problem of tent dwellers to Prazot and other welfare agencies was that
there is no housing problem, far less a crisis, but rather underprivileged families with a
housing problem (among other troubles).
However, there were many ‘multi-problem families’ who were not eligible for assistance
according to the accepted criteria of the Housing Ministr y and of Prazot. The task was, there-
fore, ‘to stretch the criteria’. In the Ž rst stage of the operation, Prazot located the Ž les of
single-parent families and young couples with three or more children who had appealed the
decisions of the company. ‘Those who appeal show greater signs of distress than those who
sit quietly,’ explained the ofŽ cial in charge. They found 150 Ž les, only a portion of which
referred to camp residents. After a second investigation, using more  exible criteria (fewer
children), 18 families were found eligible for what was called ‘social rent’ (subsidized rent
for life, an arrangement that most of encampment residents would have liked to receive).
The stretching of the criteria included raising the maximum allowed monthly income from
1400 NIS to 1800 NIS (about US$450–600), and recognizing a right to assistance for families
with Ž ve children or more who in the past had owned an apartment. An expression of the
talent for bureaucratic innovation can be found in the term ‘apartments not for those elig-
ible’, meaning public apartments for non-eligible families as if they were eligible.
In the Ž nal stage of this operation, it was decided to ignore the criteria that determine
eligibility for rent subsidy and to give the subsidy to all tent dwellers who were ‘truly’ home-
less (those who had never owned an apartment). With the aim of getting rid of the tents,
Prazot offered subsidized hotel rooms as a temporary solution to all 150 families who had
appealed, as well as to all tent dwellers, ‘without criteria’. The Prazot Budget Summary for
Ž scal year 1990–1 provides a formal recognition to this policy of criteria-stretching. Accord-
ing to this report, ‘Prazot, together with the Ministr y of Housing and Construction and under
its direction . . . did its best to Ž nd a solution to those families they found eligible, while
stretching the criteria in a ver y signiŽ cant way’ (p.12).
This policy of criteria-stretching was implemented across the country. Line ofŽ cers were
given considerable discretionar y powers as to eligibility decisions and were equipped with a
new set of housing ‘solutions’ – hotel rooms, increased loans and rent subsidies, and cara-
vans. According to a senior executive, the housing ofŽ cers at the local level ‘gave in to pres-
sures and stretched and bent the criteria. Their target population was not just any homeless
families. Their idea was not to Ž nd a just solution, but to quiet those who lived in the tent
encampments, those who demonstrated and appealed’. The Homeless Coordination Com-
mittee criticized the Housing Ministr y for ‘supplying solutions only to “welfare families” and
 Agenda Setting and Problem DeŽnition 45

not dealing with people who work and who have run into problems only recently because of
rising rent’. According to one member of the coordinating committee, ‘This segment of the
population consists of more than half of the protesters and, in fact, the protest began with
them. But this segment remains without a solution’ (Haaretz, 25 July, 1990). A neighbour-
hood leader expressed a similar complaint: ‘The criteria of the Ministr y are not acceptable
to us. Those who have received apartments or rent subsidies are drug addicts, released pris-
oners, or divorcees with children. The average young couple does not qualify under the con-
ditions of the Housing Ministr y’ (Haaretz, 2 September, 1990).

Gradual Evaporation
Towards the end of August 1990, newspapers reported daily on homeless families who were
leaving the encampments. ‘In the Ž rst month, there were hundreds of us,’ a homeless leader
recalls. ‘Now things are going downhill. There is mistrust in the encampments. One person
Downloaded by [University of Zimbabwe] at 00:19 13 June 2015

is afraid that another will steal away his apartment. People are giving up and leaving’ (Haaretz,
24 August, 1990). Another settler said, ‘We’re like one big family and people help each other.
But when someone is offered a housing solution, suddenly the group solidarity breaks down
and there is jealousy’ (Haaretz, 25 December, 1990).
Five months after the spontaneous outburst of the tent protest, one reporter pointed to
a movement ‘which had evaporated’ (Haaretz, 28 December, 1990). Out of the 2000 families,
234 families were left in 12 encampments. According to the Housing and Construction Min-
istry, housing solutions were found for 1021 families (719 families received rent subsidies,
318 families were given ‘social rent’ – a permanent rental solution in publicly owned apart-
ments – and 34 families were granted increased loans). The rest were sent to hotels or left
the encampments of their own free will.
Ma’aberet HaKnesset was one of the last encampments to ‘evaporate’. Its leadership
actively objected to every attempt on the part of the administration ‘to dismantle the protest
by means of futile solutions’. Housing ofŽ cials were not allowed to enter the camp to nego-
tiate with residents; ‘It’s all for one and one for all. It’s not a question of your apartment, but
a question of principles,’ declared one leader. But even the strong leadership of this encamp-
ment could not continue to guide the tent settlers when a housing solution might be at stake.
The success of the break-in at the Absorption Center in Gilo attracted many Ma’abara resi-
dents who left and joined the squatters. The start of the school year, the coming of the High
Holidays, the bitter cold of the Jerusalem winter, and the threats of Saddam Hussein seem
to have joined forces with the government policy of criteria-stretching to individualize the
struggle and terminate the tents movement.
On the night of the Ž rst Iraqi missile attack (18 Januar y, 1991) 24 families stayed in
Ma’aberet HaKnesset in Jerusalem and were evacuated to the adjacent Israel Museum; the
following day they were taken to hotels. On that night 265 people were still living in the Tel
Aviv encampments. About a dozen families persisted in a few tent camps in the Tel-Aviv area,
forgotten, until a new municipal evacuation operation began, in July 1991, and brought back
the television cameras. Given that housing policy has remained intact ever since, ‘the
problem’ as understood and advanced by protesters did not vanish. ‘The problem’ as under-
stood and defended by government ofŽ cials was effectively resolved, although no claim is
made that this will put an end to new demands and protests.

Conclusion
The success of the protest group at the agenda-setting stage did not entail in uence on the
outcomes of the policy-making process. Whereas the housing issue was legitimized, the
 46 David Dery

demand for a radically different housing policy was utterly frustrated. By drawing an explicit
distinction between agenda setting and problem deŽ nition, we render mixed results of this
kind unsurprising. While government appears vulnerable to popular demands at the agenda-
setting stage, particularly if these attract a broad coalition of dissatisŽ ed citizens, the next
stage of problem deŽ nition symbolizes the vulnerability of protest groups to government
manipulation. Given the ‘free-rider’ problem and the ensuing difŽ culties for organizing and
maintaining mass protest (Olson, 1965), it is unlikely that what initially holds various protest
groups together would endure and continue to have impact after their concerns are recog-
nized as deserving government consideration.
Democratic participation may be envisioned as a relay race. Protesters in this race can at
best force their issue into the hands of a reluctant government (agenda-setting), but to satisfy
their demands they must win a different sort of battle (problem deŽ nition), one for which
protesters are normally ill-equipped. In this case, the Israeli government managed to dis-
aggregate the overall demand for a new housing policy, by deŽ ning the problem in terms of
Downloaded by [University of Zimbabwe] at 00:19 13 June 2015

housing conditions for the extremely needy. The problem has thus come to be ‘owned’
(GusŽ eld, 1981) by those (ie municipal welfare agencies) who deal with people on welfare
and have virtually nothing to do with national or local housing policy.
What happens after issues gain agenda status? The fact that a given issue has reached the
public agenda tells us that there might exist an opportunity for action – but what sort of
action? We are in no position to know, unless we further examine the fate of issues after they
have reached the ofŽ cial agenda. Democratic policy-making processes may have been
designed for perpetual negotiations, where the outcomes of any one stage are not allowed to
fully determine the outcomes of subsequent stages. The present paper has concentrated on
one ‘pair’ of consecutive stages – agenda-setting and problem deŽ nition. To the extent that
this indeterminate relationship holds for other stages in the policy process (eg decision-
making and implementation, see Nakamura and Smallwood, 1980; or evaluation and ter-
mination, see Der y, 1984b), it would seem advisable to further explore the notion of
‘perpetual negotiation’ and its implications for public policy-making.

Note
1. Ma’abara is literally a transit camp, but in the Israeli context the term is quite loaded. It con-
notes the ill absorption and discriminatory policies towards Jews from Arab countries
(Sephardim) in the early 1950s, allegedly the main source of the ethnic gaps that are stil
present. Most tent dwellers in 1990 were, in fact, descendants of the Ž rst generation of Sephardi
immigrants.

References
ANDERSON, J. E. (Ed.) (1976) Cases in Public Policy-Making, New York: Praeger.
ARGYRIS, C. (1977) Double-Loop Learning in Organizations, Harvard Business Review, Sept–Oct.
pp.115–25.
ARGYRIS, C. and D. A. SCHON (1996) Organizational Learning II, Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley.
BARDACH, E. (1996) The Eight-Step Path of Policy Analysis, Berkeley: Berkeley Academic Press.
BAUMGARTNER F. R. and B. D. JONES (1993) Agendas and Instability in American Politics, Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
BENNIS, W. (1966) Changing Organizations, New York: McGraw-Hill.
BIRKLAND, T. A. (1997) After Disaster: Agenda Setting, Public Policy and Focusing Events, Washington,
DC: Georgetown University Press.
BREWER, G. D., and P. DELEON (1983) The Foundations of Policy Analysis, Homewood Ill.: Dorsey.
COBB, R. W. and C. D. ELDER (1983) Participation in American Politics: The Dynamics of Agenda Build-
ing, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
COBB, R. W. and M. H. ROSS (1997) ‘Agenda Setting and the Denial of Agenda Access: Key
 Agenda Setting and Problem DeŽnition 47

Concepts’ in R. W. and M. H. Cobb (Eds.) Cultural Strategies of Agenda Denial, Lawrence,

KS: University Press of Kansas.
DERY, D. (1984a) Problem DeŽnition in Policy Analysis, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
DERY, D. (1984b) Evaluation and Termination in the Policy Cycle, Policy Sciences, 17, pp.13–26.
DERY, D. with the collaboration of B. SCHWARTZ-MILNER (1994) Who Governs Local Government?, Tel-
Aviv: Hakibutz Hameuchad (in Hebrew).
DEUTSCH, K. W. (1975) On the Learning Capacity of Large Political Systems, in M. Kochen (Ed.)
Information for Action, New York: Academic Press, pp.61–83.
DUNN, W. N. (1988) Methods of the Second Type: Coping with the Wilderness of Conventional
Policy Analysis, Policy Studies Journal, vol. 7, no. 4, summer 1988, pp.720–37.
FRIEDMAN, R. (1988) Survey of Young Couples Who Married During 1986–1988, submitted to the
Ministry of Housing and Construction, November, 1988 (in Hebrew).
GAYER, D. (1991) Assessment of the Changes in the Scoring System for Young Couples, submitted
to the Ministry of Housing and Construction, June, 1991 (in Hebrew).
GUSFIELD, J. (1981) The Culture of Public Problems, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
HEDBERG, B. (1981) How Organizations Learn and Unlearn, in P. C. Nystrom and W. H. Starbuck
Downloaded by [University of Zimbabwe] at 00:19 13 June 2015

(Eds.) Handbook of Organizational Design, vol. 1, New York: Oxford University Press.
HIRSCHMAN, A. O. (1970) Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
HIRSCHMAN, A. O. (1992) Rival Views of Market Society, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
HIRSCHMAN, A. O. (1995) A Propensity to Self-Subversion, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
KINGDON, J. W. (1984) Agendas Alternatives and Public Policy, Boston: Little, Brown.
LANDAU, M. (1973) On the Concept of a Self-Correcting Organization, Public Administration Review,
vol. 33, no. 6, 1973, pp.533–42.
LINDBLOM C. E. and D. K. COHEN (1979) Usable Knowledge, New Haven: Yale University Press.
LIPSKY, M. (1968) Protest as a Political Resource, American Political Science Review, vol. 62, Decem-
ber 1968, pp.1144–58.
LIPSKY, M. (1980) Street-Level Bureaucracy , New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
MCCLAIN, P. D. (1990) Agenda Setting, Public Policy, and Minority Group In uence, Policy Studies
Review, vol. 9, no. 2, Winter 1990.
MAJONE, G. (1980) Policies as Theories, Omega, vol. 8, no. 2, 1980, pp.151–62.
MAJONE, G. (1989) Evidence, Argument, and Persuasion in the Policy Process, New Haven: Yale University
Press.
MARKEN, R. S. (1990) A Science of Purpose, American Behavioral Scientist, 34/1, Sept–Oct 1990,
pp.6–13.
MAY, J. V., and A. WILDAVSKY (Eds.) (1978) The Policy Cycle, Beverly Hills: Sage.
NAKAMURA, R. T. and F. SMALLWOOD (1980) The Politics of Policy Implementation, New York: St. Martin’s
Press.
OLSON, M. (1965) The Logic of Collective Action, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
POLSBY, N. (1984) Political Innovation in America, New Haven: Yale University Press.
PRESSMAN J. L., and A. WILDAVSKY (1984) Implementation, 3rd edition, Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press.
REICH, R. B. (Ed.) (1988) The Power of Public Ideas, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
REIN, M. and SCHON, D. H. (1977) Problem-Setting in Policy Research, in C. H. Weiss (Ed.) Using
Social Research in Public Policy Making, Lexington, Mass: Lexington Books, pp. 235–50.
ROCHEFORT D. A., and R. W. COBB (Eds.) (1994) The Politics of Problem DeŽnition, Lawrence, KS: Uni-
versity Press of Kansas.
STEINBRUNER, J. D. (1974) The Cybernetic Theor y of Decision, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
SCHON, D. A. (1983) The Reective Practitioner, New York: Basic Books.
STONE, D. A. (1988) Policy, Paradox and Political Reason, New York: HarperCollins.
WEICK, K. E. (1995) Sensemaking in Organizations, Thousand Oaks: Sage.
WEISS, J. A. (1989) The Powers of Problem DeŽ nition: The Case of Government Paperwork, Policy
Sciences, vol. 22, pp.97–121.
WILDAVSKY, A. (1979) Speaking Truth to Power: The Art and Craft of Policy Analysis, London: Macmillan.
WOLSFELD, G. (1984) Collective Political Action and Media Strategy: The Case Of Yamit, Journal of
Conict Resolution, vol. 28, 1984, pp.1–36.
WOLSFELD, G. (1988) The Politics of Provocation: Participation and Protest in Israel, New York: State Uni-
versity of New York Press.