Setting Agendas and Designing Alternatives: Policymaking and the Strategic Role of Meetings -super-1

This paper investigates the role of strategic forums-such as special commissions, task forces, roundtables, working groups, summits-in the policy process. Reviewing prominent theories about policymaking, the author suggests ways in which strategic forums might fit within these frameworks as an analytically distinct policy lever. The paper examines existing literature on such forums, and identifies characteristics of "meetings that matter"-those gatherings that appear to have achieved some policy traction in a given domain. Finally, the paper investigates a particular field, cultural policy, to evaluate the extent to which meetings are serving policy purposes. Copyright 2004 by The Policy Studies Association..