The Influence of Institutions on Issue Definition: Children's Environmental Health Policy in the United States and Canada

This article seeks to explain why US environmental policy has increasingly focused on children's environmental health while this frame has not had the same impact on either the political agenda or policy outputs in Canada. This contrast is striking since the literature on issue definition and agenda setting suggests that redefining environmental issues in terms of a valence issue like children's health should be a promising strategy for politicians in both countries. We argue that Canada's less enthusiastic embrace of children's environmental health is a function of the institutional context, in particular fewer opportunities for policy entrepreneurship in a parliamentary government than within the US separation of powers; distinctive policy legacies in the two countries that created an opportunity to advance children's environmental health in the US but deterred it in Canada; and different opportunity structures for non-governmental actors, which prompted US environmentalists to frame their campaigns in terms of children sooner than did their Canadian counterparts. The study illustrates the value of cross-national studies of agenda setting in highlighting the influence of political institutions on issue definition.