Adapting the Multiple Streams Framework to Polycentric Governance: Evidence from Intermunicipal Bicycle Policy

The Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) explains policy processes through the interaction of problem, policy, and politics streams, but provides limited conceptual leverage for analyzing policy processes in which multiple autonomous decision-making centers develop parallel stream constellations and interact with one another. This article develops a polycentric Multiple Streams Framework that conceptualizes problem, policy, and politics streams as center-specific and introduces cross-center coupling to capture the transfer and translated uptake of stream elements across center boundaries. The framework is illustrated through a qualitative case study of an intermunicipal cycling infrastructure project in Germany. The analysis reconstructs five decision-making centers and four patterns of cross-center coupling. It shows how an authorized policy in one center can be reframed as a problem of urgency and prioritization in another, how policy elements can be operationalized through technical coordination, how local political demands can generate prioritization pressure, and how municipal policies can be reframed within a regional coordination structure. The findings demonstrate that cross-center coupling can occur without directly producing formal authorization and that its consequences depend on how transferred stream elements are taken up and on the capacities and authority of the receiving center. The polycentric MSF thus extends the MSF to capture interactions among parallel, center-specific stream constellations while retaining its core stream architecture.