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Symposium

Alive and Kicking at 40. From Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies to a Policy Process Framework

Reimut Zohlnhöfer and Nicole Herweg
p. 416-422

Abstract

On the 40th anniversary of John Kingdon’s Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) is more vibrant than ever. In this contribution, we briefly summarize the development of the MSF from its inception to the present day. Next, we present three important theoretical and methodological advances in the MSF over the past decade. Regarding theoretical advancements, we focus on (1) the application of the MSF to stages of the policy process following agenda-setting, (2) the transfer of the MSF to different institutional contexts, and (3) the development of new actor roles in MSF reasoning. In our discussion of methodological advancements, we highlight (1) the development of MSF hypotheses, (2) best practices for operationalizing the framework’s figurative concepts, and (3) suggestions for quantitatively testing individual aspects of MSF theorizing. We conclude by assessing that MSF research has addressed many criticisms from the literature (such as inconsistent operationalization of key concepts or story-telling rather than hypotheses-testing). However, scholars must also use these advancements and apply the framework rigorously to take advantage of the explanatory potential of the framework.

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Introduction

1Today, the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) is one of the most prolific lenses for analyzing the policy process. Literally hundreds of studies have used the framework in different kinds of contexts. Recent literature reviews (Jones et al., 2016; DeLeo et al., 2024) identified 645 scholarly articles that empirically applied the framework (rather than merely referencing it in passing) – and this only includes English-language, peer-reviewed journal articles referenced in the Web of Science and published between 2000 and 2022. If we included monographs, chapters, and non-English literature, the number of applications would most likely be much higher. As the literature reviews also inform us, the framework has been applied in and to all continents (except Antarctica), to sub-national, national, and international policy processes, and to all stages of the policy process from agenda-setting to policy termination.

2Although somewhat modified and expanded in some respects (as we will discuss below), the MSF goes back to John W. Kingdon’s Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies, a book that was published in 1984 and thus turning 40 this year. Interestingly, Kingdon does not seem to have had in mind the development of a general policy process framework; rather, he focused on agenda-setting in the United States (US). Nevertheless, the book certainly became a landmark analysis and inspired many policy researchers, as evidenced by the large number of scholars using MSF as a theoretical lens (and the even larger number of researchers citing Kingdon’s book).

3In this contribution, we start by briefly summarizing the development of the MSF from the publication of Kingdon’s book onwards. Next, we will present an overview of some of the theoretical and methodological advancements of the MSF literature over the past decade. Finally, we will briefly assess where MSF research stands today and the avenues for the future development of the framework.

From Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies to a General Policy Process Framework

4The history of the MSF clearly begins in 1984 with the publication of Kingdon’s Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies. Interestingly, however, the ‘father of the MSF’ neither developed his ideas further nor sought to transform his model into a full-fledged policy process framework. Rather than popularize the book’s ideas in further articles, Kingdon rarely returned to his model. In the second and third editions of Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, published in 1995 and 2011, he merely discussed additional cases of agenda-setting in the US and clarified some arguments but did not attempt to theorize policymaking beyond agenda-setting. Nor did he discuss whether and how his model could be applied outside the US or at the sub- or international level. Kingdon even declined to present ‘his’ framework when invited to contribute to the first edition of Paul Sabatier’s volume on the ‘Theories of the Policy Process’ (Sabatier, 2000, p. 136).

5The chapter was eventually written by Nikolaos Zahariadis, and this was an obvious choice because Zahariadis not only coined the name of the framework, but also acted as what might be referred to as an ‘academic entrepreneur’ (Zohlnhöfer & Rüb, 2016, p. 2). Zahariadis (1992, 1995, 1996, 2003) was probably the first to apply the framework to places other than the US (originally France and the UK) and to stages of the policy cycle after agenda-setting (originally decision-making), adapting the MSF to these new contexts in the process. Numerous other scholars also began to discover the framework in the 1990s and 2000s, but their applications remained isolated and mostly uninterested in theory development, at least not beyond the individual cases in question. Hence, there was hardly a vibrant community of MSF scholars at the time. This lack of intellectual interaction is reflected in literature reviews of the scholarship up until the 2010s, which found “a generally self-contained literature populated primarily by isolated case studies in which authors either failed to speak to the wider literature, presented models that were difficult to compare with others, or used MSA [read: MSF] to focus on new objects of study” (Cairney & Jones, 2016, pp. 49–50; see also Jones et al., 2016 and Rawat & Morris, 2016).

6This state of affairs began to change in the 2010s. Probably triggered by a workshop at the 2013 ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, which resulted in a forum section in the European Journal of Political Research (Zohlnhöfer & Rüb, 2015) and an edited volume (Zohlnhöfer & Rüb, 2016), MSF scholars increasingly started to organize their own workshops or to congregate at various international conferences to discuss their work. These efforts led to a number of additional special issues and edited volumes (for example, Béland & Howlett, 2016; Policy Studies Journal, 2016; Zahariadis, 2016; Zahariadis et al., 2023), but even more importantly, brought a growing number of MSF scholars into regular contact and extensive intellectual exchange. Thus, instead of MSF scholarship remaining an individual endeavor, a network of scholars now engages with each other’s research and strives to improve the explanatory capacity and empirical applicability of the framework. We will briefly present some of the results of this recent surge in MSF scholarship in the next section.

Recent Theoretical and Methodological Advancements

7There are three areas in particular in which scholars have advanced the MSF theoretically over the past decade or so (for the following, see DeLeo et al., 2024, pp. 26–48). First, research has suggested ways in which the MSF can be used to analyze the stages of the policy process. For example, Herweg, Huß, and Zohlnhöfer (2015) propose to cover the decision-making stage by introducing a second coupling process in which political entrepreneurs, i.e., actors in a political leadership position, seek to find majorities in the relevant decision-making venues. In this effort, they use concessions, package deals, and manipulation to win the approval of veto actors or circumvent them. In this way, these authors are also able to introduce formal institutions or veto actors into the MSF (Zohlnhöfer et al., 2016). Since adopted policies are still ambiguous due to package deals, concessions, and manipulation, policy implementation also lends itself to MSF analysis, as Luke Fowler (2023) has convincingly argued (see his contribution to this symposium). Finally, even policy termination can be analyzed with the MSF with comparatively little need for adaptation (Wenzelburger & Thurm, 2023).

8Second, MSF scholars have increasingly taken into account the institutional contexts of agenda-setting and policymaking. Building on the work of Zahariadis (1992, 1995), Herweg et al. (2015) have suggested how MSF can be adapted to explain policymaking in parliamentary systems. The core argument is that political parties play a much more important role in these systems than in the US, for which Kingdon developed his model. This applies not only to the political stream (where parties take precedence over the national mood and interest groups), but also to the policy stream, because party policy experts can be important members of policy communities.

9Slightly more modifications are needed to make the MSF travel to autocracies – but again, as shown by Herweg, Zahariadis, and Zohlnhöfer (2022) and van den Dool (2023), it is possible and extremely fruitful to apply the MSF in non-democracies (see also van den Dool & Schlaufer, in this symposium). Autocracies are likely to respond to problems more selectively than democracies, unless the survival of the autocrat is at stake. In the policy stream, the “anticipated approval of the current leader” (Herweg et al., 2022, p. 213) is expected to be of greatest relevance. Finally, in the political stream, the autocratic leader is likely to dominate, although occasionally, interest groups (to the extent they exist) and sometimes even the national mood can be relevant.

10Moreover, the MSF has generated exciting new perspectives when applied to multilevel governance (Knaggård & Hildingsson, 2023) or the EU (Herweg, 2017). Again, while some adjustments seem to be in order – especially with respect to the political stream (as, for example, it is unclear whether a national or European mood exists when analyzing EU policymaking) – the basic operating structure of the MSF can remain intact to analyze policy processes in these settings, which differ radically from the one for which Kingdon originally developed his model.

11Third, there has also been theoretical advancement with regard to the relevant actors or actor roles in the MSF. The most prominent actor in Kingdon’s original formulation was clearly the policy entrepreneur. This role is still very prominent in MSF thinking today. At the same time, further refinements have been suggested even in this regard. For example, Petridou et al. (2024) have argued that not all policy entrepreneurs pursue an opportunity; rather, some act because they believe they must. Petridou and co-authors call these actors ‘reactive policy entrepreneurs’.

12Others have proposed new actor roles. For example, Knaggård (2015, p. 450) has introduced problem brokers to the problem stream, i.e., individuals who “frame conditions as public problems and work to make policy makers accept these frames”. Similarly, Herweg et al. (2015), building on Roberts and King (1991), have introduced political entrepreneurs as actors with a political leadership position (ministers, parliamentarians, etc.) who are not necessarily involved in the development of an idea, but get convinced by policy entrepreneurs and then seek to get the idea adopted.

13Finally, the issue of methods has become increasingly relevant in the MSF community, and rightly so, since we can only assess the explanatory power of a framework if we can test it empirically with some rigor. A first step was the formulation of generic hypotheses (Herweg et al., 2015; Herweg et al., 2023) – something that has long been lacking in the MSF. The framework’s main idea can be summarized in the following hypothesis: “Agenda change becomes more likely if (a) a policy window opens, (b) the streams are ready for coupling, and (c) a policy entrepreneur promotes the agenda change” (Herweg et al., 2023, p. 40). Similarly, hypotheses can also be deduced for the various elements of the framework and for further stages of the policy process (see Herweg et al., 2023, pp. 40, 44). While hypotheses are certainly important to guide empirical research and reduce confirmation bias, we should not forget that one of the strengths of the MSF is that it explains entire policy processes; therefore, we should not forget about these processes in our empirical investigations.

14An important methodological issue for MSF scholars is Kingdon’s figurative language. How can we operationalize ‘windows’, ‘streams’, or ‘primeval soups’? These questions are challenging for anyone applying the framework, but recently best practices have been identified from the literature that can help scholars come up with plausible measurements of the framework’s core concepts in case studies as well as large-N analyses (Zohlnhöfer et al., 2022).

15The vast majority of empirical MSF analyses are case studies (Jones et al., 2016; Rawat & Morris, 2016), often using process tracing and other qualitative or sometimes interpretive methods. Nevertheless, there are also some suggestions on how the framework can be tested in large-N settings, either quantitatively or using QCA (Engler & Herweg, 2019). Indeed, there are some quite promising examples of how individual aspects of MSF theorizing can be tested quantitatively in a convincing way (for example, DeLeo & Duarte, 2022; Goyal, 2022).

Conclusion

16As this brief overview shows (which is by no means exhaustive; see, for example, Winkel and Leipold’s (2016) interpretive account), the development of MSF theory has been extremely vibrant in recent years. There is a great deal of exchange in the MSF scholarly community, which aims at improving the framework itself and its empirical applicability. While certainly not all questions are answered and not all problems are solved, it is clear that some of the criticism in the literature is no longer valid. To give just a few examples: The core concepts of the framework are increasingly defined in a coherent way, and there are best practice examples of how to measure them; generic hypotheses are available, which should allow for a cumulative accumulation of knowledge; scholars have thoroughly theorized extensions to different stages of the policy cycle and to widely varying institutional settings in all geographical regions of the world, which should allow for a broad applicability of the MSF while leaving the operational structure of the framework intact.

17These attempts at advancing the MSF do not preclude the possibility that scholars will use the MSF flippantly, fail to get the concepts right, or engage in a story-telling exercise rather than a rigorous empirical application and thus still prove the old criticism right. However, these scholars cannot claim that they cannot do better. The theoretical tools are available and there are a number of best practice examples of how to apply MSF empirically. Certainly, not all problems regarding the MSF have been solved, and new ones are likely to be discovered as more people engage in applying the framework and assessing its hypotheses and main arguments. Nevertheless, as authors, readers, and reviewers of MSF-related research, we should make every effort to ensure that concepts are used consistently and in line with the MSF, that the latest theoretical arguments and hypotheses are discussed and either corroborated or falsified, and that we avoid story-telling and confirmation bias, especially in our case studies. Hence, it is important and more than welcome that new scholars with diverse backgrounds join the MSF scholarly community because we are convinced that if we adhere to these points, the MSF has much to offer in terms of our understanding of a complex and ever-changing political world.

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Bibliography

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References

Bibliographical reference

Reimut Zohlnhöfer and Nicole Herweg, Alive and Kicking at 40. From Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies to a Policy Process FrameworkInternational Review of Public Policy, 6:3 | 2024, 416-422.

Electronic reference

Reimut Zohlnhöfer and Nicole Herweg, Alive and Kicking at 40. From Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies to a Policy Process FrameworkInternational Review of Public Policy [Online], 6:3 | 2024, Online since 11 September 2024, connection on 06 March 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/irpp/4724; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/13gfy

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