Who is a Stream? Epistemic Communities, Instrument Constituencies and Advocacy Coalitions in Multiple Streams Subsystems

Abstract

John Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) was articulated in order to better understand how issues entered into agendas, using the concept of a actors interacting in course of sequences of events occurring in what he referred to as the problem, policy and streams. In this study Kingdon used an undifferentiated concept of a ‘policy subsystem’ to organize the activities of various actors involved in this process. However, it is not a priori certain who the agents are in this process and how they interact. This paper argues the world can also be visualized as being composed of different distinct subsets of subsystem actors who engage over specific sets of interactions over the definition of problems, the articulation of solutions and their matching or enactment. Using this lens, this article focuses on actor interactions involved in formulation activities occurring immediately following the agenda setting stage upon which Kingdon originally worked. This activity involves the definition of goals (both broad and specific) and the creation of the means and mechanisms to realise these goals. The article argues this stage is best analyzed form the perspective of three separate sets of actors involved in these tasks: the epistemic community which finds itself engaged in discourses about problems; the activities of instrument constituencies which define the stream in which alternatives and instruments are formulated; and that of advocacy coalitions which make up the politics stream as they compete to have their choice of alternatives selected by decision makers. The article argues these different sets of actors personify each of Kingdon’s three different streams of policy, problem and politics and that extending Kingdon’s work to the examination of formulation using this basic vocabulary yields superior insights into formulation than other extant models.