The agenda defines the set of problems and issues that will receive serious attention from policy makers. Agendas constantly change. For instance, environmental concerns may be an important item on the agenda during one year, but these concerns may fall off the agenda the next year if the economy goes bad. The economy then becomes an important agenda concern. As a result, some problems do not make it onto the agenda of government.
Interest groups play a large role in getting a problem to be put on the agenda of government.
A role for political scientists is to study ways to overcome problems. It is the job of elected officials to consider the different policy alternatives and to choose one of them. Ronald Reagan and Congress during the early 1980s dealt with the unemployment problem by adopting the lower taxes policy alternative. These agencies write regulations to put the often times vague acts of Congress into operation. The war of poverty during the 1960s did not solve the problem of poverty, but it did reduce poverty in many areas.