The multiple streams model, developed by Kingdon in the United States (US), is being adapted increasingly to study European Union (EU) policy-making. This, however, is revealing a theoretical underdevelopment in some of its central components. The present paper considers several concerns. It seeks to develop the idea of policy entrepreneurship as a context-specific activity that gives substance to the claim that 'ideas have their time'; it interprets the key notion of ambiguity, in the EU context, to mean institutional ambiguity; and it allows for spillovers between policy areas to be endogenous as well as exogenous. This affects the nature of the policy windows wherein policy entrepreneurship occurs. The adapted multiple streams model is used to analyse the 2005 EU sugar policy reform. Institutional ambiguity and endogenous spillovers are shown to create the conditions that enabled active policy entrepreneurship to lead, ultimately, to reform of this most resilient of policies.

The multiple streams framework draws insight from interactions between agency and institutions to explore the impact of context, time, and meaning on policy change and to assess the institutional and issue complexities permeating the European Union (EU) policy process. The authors specify the assumptions and structure of the framework and review studies that have adapted it to reflect more fully EU decision-making processes. The nature of policy entrepreneurship and policy windows are assessed to identify areas of improvement. Finally, the authors sketch out a research agenda that refines the logic of political manipulation which permeates the lens and the institutional complexity which frames the EU policy process.

The multiple streams framework draws insight from interactions between agency and institutions to explore the impact of context, time, and meaning on policy change and to assess the institutional and issue complexities permeating the European Union (EU) policy process. The authors specify the assumptions and structure of the framework and review studies that have adapted it to reflect more fully EU decision-making processes. The nature of policy entrepreneurship and policy windows are assessed to identify areas of improvement. Finally, the authors sketch out a research agenda that refines the logic of political manipulation which permeates the lens and the institutional complexity which frames the EU policy process.

Positing the implementation of evidenced-based policies to manage the informal economy, our paper employs, in a novel way, the multiple-cause, multiple-indicator model and primary data, to identify the determinants of the Nigerian informal economy. Building on previous literature, relevant determinants of the informal economy were constructed from participants' responses to questions designed to solicit such information. We found the factors responsible for the origin and expansion of the Nigerian informal economy to include: unemployment, a need to be autonomous/self-employed, corruption of government officials/agencies, participants' desire to pay less tax, and participants' need to survive. The greatest influence, in terms of magnitude and impacts, comes from the 'participants' need to survive' factor, followed by corruption. Our policy recommendations follow these identified factors, and recognise the positive and important role played by the informal economy. Although country-specific, our findings/recommendations may be used to inform policy in other countries with similar economic structures as Nigeria.

The EU budget has only recently started to feature in theories of European integration.Studies typically adopt a historical-institutionalist framework, exploring notions such as path dependency. They have, however, generally been rather aggregated, or coarsegrained, in their approach. The EU budget has thus been treated as a single entity rather than a series of inter-linked institutions. This paper seeks to address these lacunae by adopting a fine-grained approach. This enables us to emphasise the connections that exist between EU budgetary institutions, in both time and space. We show that the initial set of budgetary institutions was unable, over time, to achieve consistently their Treaty-based objectives. In response, rather than reform these institutions at potentially high political cost, additional institutions were layered on top of the extant structures. We thus demonstrate how some EU budgetary institutions have remained unchanged, whilst others have been added or changed over time.