Kingdon's Framework Research Articles

International donors, domestic politics, and the expansion of social cash transfers in Malawi

SummaryMotivationInternational donors piloted social cash transfers in Africa in the 2000s. Successful pilots need to be expanded, to be nationally owned, and to be funded by regular budgets. How this may be done depends on domestic politics, which vary by country. Donors need to engage with local politics if they wish their pilots to be institutionalized. Malawi is one such case, where a change of president opened a window for policy reforms.PurposeWhy were donors, over six years, unable to persuade Bingu wa Mutharika's government of Malawi to adopt social cash transfers; but succeeded with Joyce Banda's administration within two months of her being in office?Methods and approachI adopt John Kingdon's multiple streams framework, originally developed in 1984 to explain how agenda are set in the USA. He observed separate streams of problems, potential policy responses, and politics which may converge at critical junctures—policy windows—when new policies may be adopted. I interviewed 25 policy‐makers in Malawi, including political leaders, donor staff, government civil servants, and civil society officers to trace policy‐making for social cash transfers.FindingsMalawi can be seen to have a super‐presidential system, in which presidents and their closest allies overwhelmingly set the agenda, aligned to their ideological views and political interests. When presidents change, a policy window opens. Mutharika prioritized increasing the maize harvest and stabilizing the economy. The input subsidies used to achieve the former, he saw as “home‐grown” solutions, were preferred to donor orthodoxies. Social protection was for him another donor orthodoxy. It did not align with his beliefs and conflicted with his interests in food security. When Mutharika died suddenly in 2012, Vice‐President Banda took over. Her experience was different to that of her predecessor: she had worked with civil society, was acutely aware of poverty, and had good relations with external non‐governmental organizations and donors. She saw priorities in rising vulnerability and exclusion, she favoured safety nets, and was anxious to gain support for her administration. Social protection came rapidly into favour, pilots were expanded into a national programme.Policy implicationsPolitical leaders support programmes that benefit both development and political survival. Understanding how a brief policy window opened in 2006 (for a draft social support policy) before a larger window opened in 2012, shows both inflection points happened when donor framing on social protection aligned with the ideas and interests of ruling elites. Three useful lessons emerge for donors promoting social protection. First, alignment of ideas and interests matter more than persuasion. Second, framing of social protection should consider domestic politics—in this case the political utility of cash transfers compared to farm subsidies. Third, the interplay of ideas and interests matters—in this case an incoming president faced by an economic crisis while trying to consolidate power saw social protection as a way to alleviate the crisis and build support. Kingdon's framework serves well to analyse this case, but not entirely. It focuses on the ideas and interests of the elites, and may ignore changing ideas among citizens in which Malawi's elites maintained the farm subsidies while citizens grew increasingly sceptical of their value.

For Better or for Worse: Fifty Years Since the Removal of the Marriage Bar in the Australian Public Service

Fifty years ago, in late 1966, the Australian Public Service officially removed the “marriage bar” policy that had prevented the recruitment or continued employment of married women. The anniversary of this historic milestone is an opportunity to reflect on the introduction and removal of the marriage bar and to reflect on the policy change process and lessons that can be applied to the continuing struggle for gender equality at work. The research uses John Kingdon's framework for policy change to examine the delays and obstacles to the removal of the marriage bar. It highlights a number of occasions when the window of opportunity for policy change was briefly open but rapidly closed again due to changing political and economic circumstances.

Mandating influenza vaccinations for health care workers: analysing opportunities for policy change using Kingdon's agenda setting framework.

BackgroundThe consequences of annual influenza outbreaks are often underestimated by the general public. Influenza poses a serious public health threat around the world, particularly for the most vulnerable populations. Fortunately, vaccination can mitigate the negative effects of this common infectious disease. Although inoculating frontline health care workers (HCWs) helps minimize disease transmission, some HCWs continue to resist participating in voluntary immunization programs. A potential solution to this problem is government-mandated vaccination for HCWs; however, in practice, there are substantial barriers to the adoption of such policies. The purpose of this paper is to identify the likelihood of adopting a policy for mandatory immunization of HCWs in Ontario based on a historical review of barriers to the agenda setting process.MethodsDocuments from secondary data sources were analysed using Kingdon’s agenda setting framework of three converging streams leading to windows of opportunity for possible policy adoption.ResultsThe problems, politics, and policies streams of Kingdon’s framework have converged and diverged repeatedly over an extended period (policy windows have opened and closed several times). In each instance, a technically feasible solution was available. However, despite the evidence supporting the value of HCW immunization, alignment of the three agenda setting streams occurred for very short periods of time, during which, opposition lobby groups reacted, making the proposed solution less politically acceptable.ConclusionsPrior to the adoption of any new policies, issues must reach a government’s decision agenda. Based on Kingdon’s agenda setting framework, this only occurs when there is alignment of the problems, politics, and policies streams. Understanding this process makes it easier to predict the likelihood of a policy being adopted, and ultimately implemented. Such learning may be applied to policy issues in other jurisdictions. In the case of mandatory influenza vaccinations for HCWs in Ontario, it seems highly unlikely that a new policy will be adopted until perception of the problem’s importance is sufficient to overcome the political opposition to implementing a solution and thus, create a window of opportunity that is open long enough to support change.

Moving Policy Theory Forward: Connecting Multiple Stream and Advocacy Coalition Frameworks to Policy Cycle Models of Analysis

The stages/policy cycle, multiple streams, and Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) approaches to understanding policy processes, all have analytical value although also attracting substantive criticism. An obvious direction for research is to determine whether the multiple streams framework and the ACF can be refined and applied to other dimensions of policy‐making set out in the policy cycle model. This article argues that extending and modifying Kingdon's framework beyond the agenda‐setting stage is best suited to this endeavour. Doing so makes it possible to bring these three approaches into alignment and enhances our understanding, although retaining the core insights of each.

Agenda Setting and Policy Adoption of India's National Health Insurance Scheme: Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana

—Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) is India's largest health insurance scheme. Launched in 2007, it now covers over 37 million, mostly poor, families. This massive scheme represents a major departure from past approaches to government support for health care in India. In this article, we use data from key informant interviews, published and unpublished documents, and newspaper reports, applying Kingdon's framework for agenda setting and policy adoption to explain how RSBY became national policy. India's government-operated health care delivery system had consistently failed to meet its most basic objectives—especially for the poor. A variety of previous reform efforts had been unsuccessful. Then, in 2004, the result of the national election was seen by the victors as representing a mandate to address deprivation among those in India's vast unorganized sector. That election also brought to the fore a new set of policy makers who were willing to introduce subsidized health insurance that made extensive use of the private sector. Technological advancements offered the reformers both new options and new experiences on which to base their innovations. A group of policy entrepreneurs, including Congress Party leaders, technocrats, and senior government officials, collaborated with international agencies to develop the RSBY approach, place it on the agenda, and assure its adoption as national policy. This analysis explores factors that made this significant equity-oriented health reform possible in India and provides lessons for health reformers in other countries who seek to learn from India's experiences in moving toward universal health coverage. Finally, we suggest some adjustments in Kingdon's framework to help apply his ideas in different contexts.

Changing Patterns of Privatization: Ideology, Economic Necessity, or Political Opportunism

This article considers privatization decisions by governments in four Australian states over twenty years of micro-economic reform. It focuses on the policy frameworks and political context for privatizing government enterprises, drawing on Kingdon's framework for policy change to analyze differences in the substance and timing of decisions. In the 1990s, governments considered privatization as an economic and political strategy to resolve the problem of state-level fiscal crises, but the patterns of adoption were variable. Two states resisted the general trend toward privatization, but recently changed their position. We argue that the recent financial crisis provided a window for reintroducing contentious reform initiatives that had lost momentum.

The Problem, Policy, and Political Streams of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2009: Implications for Social Work Practice

Protection from employment discrimination has been a long battle waged by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community and allies. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) of 2009 could provide comprehensive federal protection from employment discrimination based upon sexual orientation. In this article, John Kingdon's framework for policy analysis is used to explore the federal ENDA.

Understanding policy change: Multiple streams and emissions trading in Germany

This paper employs John Kingdon's [1984. Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies. Little Brown, Boston] “multiple streams” framework to analyse the sudden move from overgenerous grandfathering to tight caps and auctioning within the German emissions trading regime in the first half of 2007. By bringing together empirical evidence from interviews and official documents the following question is addressed: how completely does Kingdon's framework explain this political turn? The opening of a “policy window” can be demonstrated and Kingdon's theory concisely captures important aspects of this process. At the same time, however, the findings imply that a number of relevant factors are not sufficiently considered by the theory, most notably the influence of multi-level governance structures, learning processes, and networks. This demonstrates that the multiple streams approach on its own is not sufficient to fully understand the case study example. Hence, for a better understanding of policy change it is suggested that scholars need to evaluate the potential for amending and combining Kingdon's model with other explanatory approaches.

School Choice and Educational Privatization Initiatives in the 106th and 107th Congresses: An Analysis of Policy Formation and Political Ideologies

This article is a policy analysis that considers how the policy option of using federal programs to promote educational choice was proposed and debated in the 106th and 107th Congresses. This debate was part of the reauthorization of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) between 1999 and 2001. Over the past 20 years, Congress has debated numerous variants of private school voucher plans. The account demonstrates how the positions of the Clinton and Bush administrations, the 2000 presidential election, think tanks’ advocacy of educational privatization, and public opinion shaped congressional action. The article explains why private school voucher proposals failed to pass in two consecutive Congresses, when the Republicans held control of both houses for three of the four sessions. The article draws on interviews with congressional aides and members of interest groups during the ESEA reauthorization process, and it applies John Kingdon's framework on agenda formation to explain the persistence of alternatives for privatization within Title I. The issue of school choice in Congress reveals the limits of the GOP's ideological unity—that is, that there could be demands from Republican Party leadership to include vouchers in Title I, but President George W. Bush chose to steer his party away from those demands.

Financial ruin or financing catastrophic health coverage: Who pays?

Concern about financial ruin due to catastrophic illness has precipitated public policy actions resulting in the single largest expansion of the Medicare program by Congress since the program's inception. Using Kingdon's framework, significant participants and their actions are examined in the establishment of the health agenda and the selection of alternatives/solutions during development and passage of this legislation. During the final stages, decisions were largely driven by economics and politics, leaving many elderly persons confused and angered while many other more needy Americans are still at risk for financial ruin due to catastrophic illness.