Critical race theory, policy ambiguity and implementation: a multiple streams framework analysis

Abstract

While the events leading up to the nation’s first ban of critical race theory, Idaho’s House Bill 377, was attention-grabbing given the controversy and salience of the issues, its implementation has been lacklustre as these issues have faded from the agenda. This article uses the multiple streams framework (MSF) to unravel these events and understand both why Idaho tackled the CRT (critical race theory) ‘problem’ and how problem framing around indoctrination impacted the progression of this policy through agenda-setting to implementation. Findings from this small-scale qualitative study illustrate how Idaho politics provided fertile ground for entrepreneurs to seize on indoctrination from educational institutions perceived to be overly liberal or ‘leftist’ and couple it with proposals to ban CRT. Following adoption, though, entrepreneurs failed to influence decisions within universities with the same efficaciousness. This caused streams to decouple, as faculty did not accept the indoctrination narrative, leading to some disruption in teaching practices but inconsistent implementation overall. As well as analysing this important empirical case, this article highlights important theoretical issues for MSF, such as the mechanisms of decoupling and the reliability of information in shaping policy narratives, and how they operate across the latter stages of the policy process, namely policy adoption and implementation.