Abstract
John Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) was articulated in order to better understand how issues entered onto policy agendas, using the concept of policy actors interacting over the course of sequences of events in what he referred to as the “problem”, “policy” and “politics” “streams”. However, it is not <em>a priori</em> certain who the agents are in this process and how they interact with each other. As was common at the time, in his study Kingdon used an undifferentiated concept of a “policy subsystem” to group together and capture the activities of various policy actors involved in this process. However, this article argues that the policy world Kingdon envisioned can be better visualized as one composed of distinct subsets of actors who engage in one specific type of interaction involved in the definition of policy problems: either the articulation of problems, the development of solutions, or their enactment. Rather than involve all subsystem actors, this article argues that three separate sets of actors are involved in these tasks:<em> epistemic communities </em>are engaged in discourses about policy problems; <em>instrument constituencies</em> define policy alternatives and instruments; and <em>advocacy coalitions</em> compete to have their choice of policy alternatives adopted. Using this lens, the article focuses on actor interactions involved both in the agenda-setting activities Kingdon examined as well as in the policy formulation activities following the agenda setting stage upon which Kingdon originally worked. This activity involves the definition of policy goals (both broad and specific), the creation of the means and mechanisms to realize these goals, and the set of bureaucratic, partisan, electoral and other political struggles involved in their acceptance and transformation into action. Like agenda-setting, these activities can best be modeled using a differentiated subsystem approach.
Highlights
Since its first articulation in the early 1980s, John Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) has been one of the main models of the policy process utilized in Politics and Governance, 2015, Volume 3, Issue 2, Pages 65-75 contemporary policy research (Kingdon, 1984, 2011)
Two key aspects of Kingdon’s work with respect to his treatment of agency are examined. The first concerns his use of the concept of a policy subsystem as a generic catch-all category for policy actors, while the second concerns his use of the concept of “policy entrepreneurs” as agents providing the linkage across streams needed for agenda-setting issue entrance to occur
While the former point was not addressed in his work, it is to deal with the latter that Kingdon introduced a second category of actors, the “policy entrepreneur”, key actors whose role it was to link problem and solutions and political circumstances, allowing an issue to enter onto a government agenda and largely controlling its timing
Summary
Since its first articulation in the early 1980s, John Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) has been one of the main models of the policy process utilized in Politics and Governance, 2015, Volume 3, Issue 2, Pages 65-75 contemporary policy research (Kingdon, 1984, 2011). This community is defined as a relatively undifferentiated and cohesive set of actors bound together by a common concern with a policy subject area, distinguishable in this sense from the “policy universe” of all possible policy actors active at a point in time (Howlett & Cashore, 2009; Howlett, Ramesh, & Perl, 2009; Kingdon, 2011) Within this subsystem Kingdon highlighted the role played by some specialized actors—“brokers” or “policy entrepreneurs”—who were able to mobilize support for particular issue definitions and promote the salience of particular issues among other subsystem members. It helps drive policy theory forward by clarifying “who is a stream” and helping to adapt the MSF model to both agenda-setting and activities beyond this early stage of policy-making (Howlett et al, 2015)
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