Multilevel streams? How policy process dynamics cut across political levels

The Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) was not developed for understanding multilevel dynamics. Despite this, the framework has been used to study agenda-setting and policy-making processes in policy sectors and political systems where such dynamics are present and salient, for instance in policy fields such as environmental policy, EU governance, and public health that typically are characterized by a transboundary and multilevel nature. The MSF once was developed to understand agenda-setting in national policy contexts, but contains ample possibilities for taking multilevel dynamics into account, as it asks questions about where problems emanate from and how policy ideas are developed. These processes do not need to be confined to national contexts, but can just as well be multilevel in character. Our aim in this paper is to develop a systematic approach to how multilevel dynamics can be incorporated into the MSF, including its influence on the three streams, actor constellations and coupling, as well as windows of opportunity. To capture multilevel dynamics, the role of venues at different political levels is crucial, as is networks spanning several levels and framings of problems and policies. We draw on earlier efforts to theorize the multilevel dynamics in MSF to develop a theoretical answer to the question in what ways multiple streams can also be multilevel. This will, potentially, contribute to better possibilities of capturing and understanding a wide array of policy processes, not least contemporary transformations and transitions such as those implied by policy responses to climate change, the covid-19 pandemic or large migration flows.