Lobbying Priorities in Agenda‐Setting: Agenda Breadth, Direction, and Responsiveness Across Economic and Citizen Groups

Interest groups are key actors in shaping political agendas. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how they determine their lobbying priorities at the earliest stage of the policy process. This study advances a novel conceptual framework for studying interest groups' issue prioritization in the agenda setting stage along three complementary dimensions: agenda breadth, agenda direction, and agenda responsiveness. Drawing on original survey data from 630 EU level interest groups, our results show that issue prioritization is driven primarily by the type of constituents a group represents. Economic interest groups tend to pursue broader lobbying agendas, focus on defending the policy status quo, and are more responsive to internal member pressures when prioritizing undesired issues. Citizen groups, by contrast, typically adopt narrower agendas, prioritize challenging the status quo, and respond more strongly to external issue salience when determining their lobbying priorities. Overall, the study advances our understanding of how interest groups navigate competition for political attention and contributes to broader debates on agenda‐setting in contemporary democracies.