Travelling Far and Wide? Applying the Multiple Streams Framework to Policy-Making in Autocracies

Abstract

The Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) builds on the concepts of timing and ambiguity and their effects on the policy process. Since its introduction to agenda-setting in the U.S. presidential system, scholars have transferred the MSF’s core ideas to multiple issue areas, policy stages, and political systems. However, what has been lacking so far is a thorough discussion of the MSF’s travelling capacity to nondemocratic forms of government. Building on a brief summary of the MSF’s main ideas, this article discusses the challenges that policy-making in autocracies poses for MSF applications and ways to adapt it to the peculiarities that are typical for these regimes. The article focuses on the agenda-setting stage in which formal institutions are less important and introduces falsifiable hypotheses explaining agenda change. Due to tremendous differences regarding the organization of the decision-making process in autocratic regimes, the article only sketches out how the MSF could be adapted to explain policy change in this institutional setting. The article concludes with a discussion of whether the MSF is stretched too far by applying it to nondemocratic systems. It turns out that in theoretical and conceptual terms, the MSF travels surprisingly well to these systems.

Looking through a policy window with tinted glasses: Setting the agenda for U.S. AI policy

“…Meanwhile, relatively loose networks of often less visible actors work to develop policy alternatives or solutions in the policy (or solution) stream . Preliminary ideas, part of a “primeval soup” (Kingdon, 1984), are then refined through a “softening” process by policy communities with relevant expertise (Herweg, 2016) according to criteria such as technical and financial feasibility and value acceptability. Finally, in the political stream , national mood or public opinion, interest group activity, and the composition of the current government (Herweg et al, 2015) shape receptivity to the proposed policy problems and solutions.…”

COVID‐19 as an opportunity window for policy change; insights from electronic authentication case study in Iran

“…In many cases, the media draw policymakers' attention to a problem. This is particularly similar to what Herweg et al (2022) say about the autocratic states, that if a problem challenges the stability of the political system, it is very likely to be considered. (The purpose here is not to examine whether Iran is an autocracy; because this requires a separate review.…”

“…b) Some basic assumptions of MSM are taken from the Garbage-Can Model, describing organized anarchies (Cohen et al, 1972). Based on this, one of the main assumptions of MSM is that policy decisions are taken under high levels of ambiguity and time constraints, and the COVID-19 crisis can be counted as an ambiguous circumstance with a really tight time limit for decision making (Herweg et al, 2022), especially in the present case. c) Reasons to the opening of opportunity window addressed by Kingdon seem reconcilable with what happened in the case of e-authentication in Iran.…”

Towards a paradigm shift in social protection in developing countries? Analysing the emergence of the Ghana national unemployment insurance scheme from a multiple streams perspective

“…There are several basic assumptions in the framework ( Herweg, Zahariadis, and Zohlnhöfer, 2018 , Herweg, Zahariadis, and Zohlnhöfer, 2022 ). The fundamental assumption of the MSF, as already indicated, is that policy making is characterised by ambiguity.…”

“…Time constrains deals with the schedule for making decisions amidst uncertainties, including meeting deadlines. As explained by Herweg et al ( Herweg, Zahariadis, and Zohlnhöfer, 2022 ), policy makers have next to no time to think through policy problems and potential solutions to them. Apart from the frequent need to respond quickly to a problem, these time constraints originate from the many issues that policy makers need to attend to, which leaves extremely limited time to consider each individual problem thoroughly.…”