Agenda Setting

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Chapter 4 examines how recognized risks move from diffuse concern into formal political and institutional agendas. Recognition alone does not guarantee action; it must be translated by actors who frame the issue, mobilize support, and direct it toward audiences with the authority to respond. This chapter focuses on the relationship between messengers and audiences—how warnings travel, who amplifies them, and which audiences have the capacity or willingness to act. It distinguishes three types of messengers: insiders, interpreters, and amplifiers. Insiders draw on technical authority to render harms legible, interpreters translate complexity into accessible narratives, and amplifiers—advocates, politicians, or coalitions—elevate the issue’s salience. Each operates with a particular audience in mind: the public whose attention can legitimate an issue, legislators whose action can codify it, and companies whose compliance can operationalize it. These dynamics come into focus through the nuclear case, the chapter’s central example. Scientists and policymakers struggled to translate recognition of existential risk into political action. Before the Cuban Missile Crisis, Einstein’s appeals for global governance had moral weight but little institutional traction. Afterward, Hans Bethe’s measured authority bridged moral urgency and bureaucratic pragmatism. The episode shows that timing, temperament, and moral framing rather than expertise alone determine whether recognition becomes action. Agenda-setting here was a contingent art, reliant on the right messenger at the right moment to turn crisis into commitment.</jats:p>