They accomplish this task by placing the publics concerns on their agenda. Agenda setting is the governments way of actively showing which problems they intend to focus on during a particular session. After a problem has made it onto the agenda and legislators decided to tackle the issues at hand, the formulation process in undertaken. During this process there are many different ways government can modify the problem at hand, they normal go through rounds and rounds of discord to find the most expectable solution. At some point a policy is adopted and shaped to fit the liking of all parties involved. Policies tend to be extremely vague for this reason. Budgeting is the next sequential step in the policy formation process. During this step the bill makes its way into several different sub-committees for appropriation. Succeeding the budgeting stage, is the implementation phase where the executive branch of local, state, or federal government decides how the newly budgeted policy will be set into action. Anywhere from twelve months to seventy-two months after the implementation of the legislation there will be an evaluation of the program to make sure the legislation, which passed, actually amends the problem it aimed to solve. If the program fails, and there is no alternative way in which the legislators are able to remedy the program through revising the policy, the policy is then terminated. Now with the basic model of policy formation understood, one can take a closer look at how a problem transcends the boundary of a private problem and becomes a public one worthy of being slotted on the agenda. Though before one can begin to look at how different facets of the social and political realms make it on to the local or national agendas, the term agenda must be set and defined. Political scientists Roger Cobb and Charles Elder classify an agenda as a general set of political controversies that will be viewed at any point in time as fall...
