Ambiguity and Policy Change in German Urban Transport Policy

The Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) was originally developed on the basis of US federal policies (Kingdon 2003). Transferring the idea of independent streams and ambiguity to European policies confronts the challenge of adequately taking account of the role of political parties and hierarchical organizations like unions (Zohlnhöfer, Herweg, and Huß 2016). Addressing this challenge, the MSF has been adapted to several European countries and cases. This paper aims at widening the array of empirical application by applying the MSF to the urban level of German policy process that has some particularities: Contrary to German federal policies, political parties often only play a minor role in urban policy making. Furthermore, political actors often are not professional politicians and often directly concerned by their own policies. So, there are reasons to assume both more and less rationality on the urban level than on the federal level. We investigate the process of implementing an alternative mobility concept for a conversion area in a major German city to assess the assumptions and hypotheses of the MSF (Herweg, Zahariadis, and Zohlnhöfer 2017). Qualitative interviews that are part of a larger research project provide information about the actor constellation and decision-making process. Thereby, both empirical evidence and theoretical considerations derived from the MSF provide an explanation of the implementation of this mobility concept in particular, and reveal the explanatory power of the MSF on a local level in general. References Herweg, Nicole, Nikolaos Zahariadis, and Reimut Zohlnhöfer. 2017. "The Multiple Streams Framework: Foundations, Refinements, and Empirical Applications." In Theories of the Policy Process, edited by Christopher M. Weible and Paul A. Sabatier, 17–53. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Kingdon, John W. 2003. Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. 2. ed. ed. Boston, Mass.: Pearson Education. Zohlnhöfer, Reimut, Nicole Herweg, and Christian Huß. 2016. "Bringing Formal Political Institutions into the Multiple Streams Framework: An Analytical Proposal for Comparative Policy Analysis." Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice 18 (3):243-256. doi: 10.1080/13876988.2015.1095428.