Explaining Digital Regulation through the Multiple Streams Framework

This paper explores the EU as a regulatory body and the ways in which private and public actors influence its decision-making process. EU policymaking occurs in an environment of both global decentredness as well as internal multi-level governance structures which impact the ways in which the EU can make policy. Using recent advances in EU digital policy, this research examines the bloc’s policy process to build a framework of European policymaking based on the multiple streams framework (MSF). It asks, how does the EU make decisions on its agenda, policy, and implementation, and which actors influence this process? This study uses as its empirical context, the EU’s recent legislative push into digital policy through platforms- and AI-regulation. The goal is to understand EU policy processes, the involvement and power of private interests and foreign governments, as well as the multi-level dynamics at play throughout the creation of policy. The study examines the policy process of the Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, and the Artificial Intelligence Act through stakeholder interviews with European Commission officials, MEPs, as well as representatives from industry and civil society. This is supported by in-depth analysis of EU procedural documents as well as freedom of information requests. EU digital policy is a good empirical context to study the EU policy process with a focus on decentredness because of the involvement of different actors, global significance of the policy initiative, and the vast array of private rule-setting mechanisms in the regulatory space. This paper contributes to building an EU-based theory of the policy process based on the MSF. Previous conceptualisations of the MSF in an EU-context have sought to find functional equivalents between the EU and the MSF’s original US context. While this is a useful starting point, it does not go far enough in acknowledging the fundamentally decentred context. This paper considers more explicitly the global significance of today’s policy processes as well as the multi-level dynamics of the EU. The EU operates in a polycentric global environment and within a multi-level internal structure. Both distribute regulatory resources across many different public and private actors, which complicates the ability of any single actor to make policy. The research is highly relevant because it shines a new light on the European policy process at a time when the EU’s formal and informal procedures around making policy have come under scrutiny. The Better Regulation Initiative, which guides policymaking, was revisited in 2021 and the Commission has come under scrutiny over its practices during the pandemic. Additionally, this project focusses on a new and rapidly transforming policy area. Insights on how and why digital policy was made in the EU will continue to have much societal relevance.