Inner-city policy in Britain: Why it will not go away

The authors seek to explain why the inner city has remained on the agenda of British governments since the 1960s. Several factors suggest that government attention to the issue should wane over time: the absence of a strong constituency, limited salience to the state's core interests, and the relative failure of past policy. In fact, top government ministers and senior officials have played an active role in maintaining the issue on the agenda. To explain the continued visibility of this issue, one must consider the moral dimension of policy making along with theories of agenda setting.