Value Acceptability in Families of Nations: A Causal Mechanism of Policy Survival

Why do some ideas never become adopted policy – perhaps not even make it on to the governmental agenda? Which factors decide about survival or demise of a policy idea? Responding to these questions, this study suggests a causal mechanism based on the Multiple Streams Framework’s concept of value acceptability, a core criterion for policy survival within policy communities. Linking this concept with Francis G. Castles’ notion of “families of nations” describing country clusters with distinct policy outputs, the mechanism aims to explain the survival and demise of policy ideas within policy communities based on specific national norms. A policy idea violating these norms stands little chance to survive within the expert policy community. I aim to illustrate the explanatory potential of the causal mechanisms in a comparison of three policy processes dealing with private security regulation in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Spain. The issue of private security services touches upon the very basis of modern statehood – the monopoly of violence. Therefore, the issue relates to specific notions of the appropriate role of market and state within a family of nations. A meticulous process tracing analysis based on interview and document data allows me to carve out the specific causal path in each of the three cases. The focus on the individual cases as well as the comparison between them allows, furthermore, to identify the factors which impact on the mechanism such as the nature of the policy communities or the institutional framework within which they function. These results help to refine the hypothesized mechanism in order to apply it more widely and beyond qualitative case studies. Thus, the study contributes to the expanding literature on testable hypotheses of the Multiple Streams Framework by explicitly stating, illustrating, and refining a potential causal mechanism in three comparable case studies. Furthermore, it links the Multiple Streams Framework with Castles’ notion of “families of nations”. Such a linkage of policy process with policy output theories promises to enhance and widen the explanatory potential as well as methodological applicability of either.