Framing the Problem: Knowledge Brokers in the Multiple Streams Approach

A lot of attention has been focused on the policy stream of the multiple streams approach (MSA). John Kingdon used the role of the policy entrepreneur to theorize what was going on when problems become political issues. In order to fully grasp this process we need to further theorize also the problem stream. What is going on in the problem stream is defining the conditions for coupling done by policy entrepreneurs. It creates the context for coupling. Framing of a condition as a problem make us think about the problem in a particular way, which enables coupling to certain policies, but not to others. By including the knowledge broker as an actor in the problem stream, we can study the process of framing conditions as political problems and thereby the context of coupling. How political problems are viewed in different countries could possibly be understood by differences in problem framing, rather than regarding policy entrepreneurs as such. The constant framing and reframing by knowledge brokers, makes it important to study who gets to talk and who is listened to. Just as for policy entrepreneurs, time and access are crucial for the success of a knowledge broker. A further benefit of including the knowledge broker in the MSA is that we can theorize how actors move between streams. Kingdon argued that this movement was possible, but rather limited. If framing is important in both the problem and policy stream, what makes actors stay in one of them? The answer proposed here is that institutional constraints do tend to keep actors within one stream. However, there could be differences between types of actors, as bureaucrats and external experts. This needs to be studied further. My arguments are illustrated by a case study of climate change policy-making in the Swedish and international context.