Getting Hedge Funds Regulation into the EU Agenda: The Constraints of Agenda Dynamics

Why did the issue of hedge fund regulation enter the formal EU agenda in response to the subprime crisis? Building on existing literature on agenda dynamics in the EU, this paper argues that framing and issue expansion were key in getting the issue into the formal agenda, and that issue expansion does not necessarily imply public mobilization. Going beyond existing scholarship, however, the paper also shows that framing processes are closely associated with the characteristics of the issue for debate and that issue expansion is intimately related to the arrangements governing the specific issue domain. In other words, whereas framing and issue expansion are traditionally conceived as a strategic choice or as the outcome of an exogenous event, this paper shows that framing may also be shaped by the nature of the issue at stake and that issue expansion may result from the unintended consequences of previous governance choices