Indicating a Policy Process Framework’s Progress: The Multiple Streams Framework Case

Policy process research has enjoyed rapid development in recent years (e.g., Weible & Sabatier 2017). However, more or less systematic development of particular policy process frameworks, which can be viewed as specific institutional settings guiding the policy process research, creates a need to indicate their progress because various theoretical and empirical extensions and refinements can blur needed clarity and coherence of frameworks. Therefore, we propose to use Lakatos' theory of scientific research program to provide not only a clear structure for frameworks' analysis but also criteria for assessing particular proposals and extensions concerning a distinction between a given "hard core" and changing "protective belt" in terms of "progressive/degenerative problem-shifts." In our paper, we aim to apply Lakatos' theory to MSF to structure components of MSF (a hard core of essential elements, a protective belt of subsidiary concepts, and related hypotheses), as well as to gauge MSF's evolution and change over time. We focus on the MSF because it represents a salient case due to its widespread use as well as rapid development in recent years. We embed our methodology in a historiographic perspective given by Lakatos, and it employs in-depth qualitative document analysis of MSF core texts (Zahariadis 1999, 2003, 2014; Herweg, Zahariadis & Zohlnhöfer 2017 and recent MSF special issues) based on the Qualitative Content Analysis. We emphasize these texts because they codify the MSF lens and institutionalize our considerations of the policy process from the MSF perspective. Thus, conceptualizing MSF as a scientific research program helps us not only to improves our understanding of MSF's vivid development, to give us hints on how to analytically approach other policy process frameworks but also to understand the institutional role of policy process frameworks in the policy process research.