Wikis > Agenda-Setting Tools > Types of Government Agenda Setting Tools (Hood/NATO)

Source: Howlett, M & Shivakoti, R. (2014) Agenda-Setting Tools: State-Driven Agenda Activity from Government Relations to Scenario Forecasting.  DRAFT PAPER, Presented to ECPR Glasgow General Conference, Non-Implementation Tools Panel

Christopher Hood presented a toolset that governments use to govern which he called the NATO scheme and argued that governments tend to possess four basic resources by virtue of being government: ‘nodality’, ‘authority’, ‘treasure’ and ‘organization’. (Hood, 1986).  Nodality denotes the use of government information resources to influence and direct policy actions through the provision or withholding of ‘information’ or ‘knowledge’ from societal actors. Authority denotes the possession of legal or official power, i.e. the power officially to demand, forbid, guarantee, adjudicate. Treasure denotes the possession of a stock of moneys or ‘fungible chattels’. Organization denotes the possession of a stock of people with whatever skills they may have (soldiers, workers, bureaucrats),land, buildings, materials, computers and equipment, some how arranged. (Hood and Margetts, 2007)

We can use Hood’s NATO taxonomy to identify examples of the different agenda setting tools available to governments. Figure 1 below lists several specific types of agenda setting tools available:

Figure 1: Examples of Agenda-Setting Tools by Resource Used

Nodality Authority Treasure Organization

Government Communications

 

Issue Management

Sunset Clauses Charitable Donations

Scenario Planning

 

Strategic Foresight

In-Text Citations

Hood, C. The Tools of Government. Chatham: Chatham House Publishers, 1986.

Hood, Christopher, and Helen Z. Margetts. The Tools of Government in the Digital Age. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.