Policy issues have grown ever more complex and politically more contestable. So governments in advanced democracies often do not understand the problems they have to deal with and do not know how to solve them.
Thus, rational problem-solving models are highly unconvincing. Conversely, the Multiple-Streams Framework starts out from these conditions, which has led to increasing interest in it. Nevertheless, there has not yet been a systematic attempt to assess the potential of such scholarship.
This volume is the first attempt to fill that gap by bringing together a group of international scholars to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the Framework from different angles. Chapters explore systematically and empirically the Framework’s potential in different national contexts and in policy areas from climate change and foreign policy to healthcare and the welfare state.
Associated with the work of US political scientist John W Kingdon, for more than three decades, the multiple-streams Framework has informed the work of numerous policy scholars from all over the world. Featuring an excellent line-up comprised of well-known and more junior contributors, this edited volume offers a timely overview of key comparative, empirical-methodological, and theoretical issues raised by the Multiple-Streams Framework. This coherent book will interest the many policy scholars who draw on this now classic Framework.
-- Daniel Béland, University of Saskatchewan
This outstanding compilation provides a theoretically in-depth and empirically profound discussion, implementation and problematisation of the Multiple-Streams approach. The contributors are a mixture of high-ranking experts and talented junior researchers who enhance our broader understanding of the theoretical Framework and examine thoroughly the possibilities of applying the approach in practice. -- Nils Bandelow, Technische Universität Braunschweig
Friedbert W Rüb is a professor of political sociology and social policies at Humboldt University of Berlin. He received a diploma in political science, sociology and history and a PhD in political science from the University of Hannover. Afterwards he was, among others, Fellow of the Collegium Budapest and assistant professor at the University of Heidelberg. In 2002 he become a professor at the University of Hamburg and moved to Humboldt University of Berlin in 2008. He has published on democratisation processes in Eastern Europe, on social policies (healthcare, pension policies etc) in Germany, on political parties, and on governance problems in the German Republic. He is also co-editor of two special issues of German Policy Studies concerning changes to the Bismarckian welfare state.
Reimut Zohlnhöfer is a professor of political science at the University of Heidelberg. He received a Master’s degree in political science from the University of Heidelberg and a PhD in political science from the University of Bremen. Afterwards he was assistant professor in Heidelberg, and John F Kennedy Memorial Fellow at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University. He became a professor of comparative public policy at Otto-Friedrich-University, Bamberg, in 2008 before returning to Heidelberg in 2011. He has published in many leading political science journals including Comparative Political Studies, Governance, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of European Social Policy, Journal of Public Policy, Social Policy and Administration, and West European Politics. He is also the editor of numerous volumes and special issues, the most recent of which include Developments in German Politics 4 (Palgrave 2014; with Stephen Padgett and William Paterson).
Nicolás Barbieri is a postdoctoral researcher at the Public Policies and Government Institute and adjunct professor at the Department of Political Science, both at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He was visiting research fellow at the Université Montpellier I. He has published on policy-change, social and cultural policies and non-profit organisations, in journals such as International Journal of Cultural Policies, Métropoles and Pôle Sud.
Thomas A Birkland is the William T. Kretzer Professor of Public Policy in the School of Public and International Affairs at North Carolina State University. His research is on how sudden events like natural disasters and industrial accidents influence the policy-process. He is the author of After Disaster (1997) and Lessons of Disaster (2006).
Raquel Gallego is Professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Law and researcher at the Institute of Government and Public Policies both at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She has published on public administration and management reform, welfare policies and decentralisation, in journals such as Governance; Public Administration; Public Management Review; International Public Management Journal; and Regional and Federal Studies, as well as in edited books by Routledge and Ashgate.
Sheila González is adjunct professor at the Department of Political Science at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and at the Department of Arts and Humanities at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. She has been visiting research fellow at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Universität Bremen and Instituto Politécnico Nacional de México. She has published on public-policy analysis, migration and educational policies and participatory processes, in journals such as Educational Policy and Educación XXI.
Dan Hansén, PhD, is associate professor in political science at the Swedish National Defence College. His research focuses on various aspects of crisis-management, in particular in relation to the law-enforcement sector, with themes such as organisational learning, policy-reform craft and co-ordination/collaboration in crisis. His work has been published in article/chapter format by the Cambridge University Press and in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory; Public Administration; and the Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, amongst others.
Nicole Herweg is a PhD candidate and a research assistant at the Institute of Political Science at Heidelberg University. Her primary field of interest is comparative public-policy analysis, particularly energy policy. She has authored or co-authored several articles on theoretical refinements or empirical applications of the multiple streams framework.
Michael Howlett is Burnaby Mountain Chair in the Department of Political Science at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada and Yong Pung How Chair Professor in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He works on public-policy theory, with a special interest in resource and environmental policy. His most recent book is Canadian Public Policy: Selected studies in process and style (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013).
Christian Huß is a PhD student at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. He holds a diploma in political science from the University of Bamberg. His research focuses on energy, environmental and economic policy in Germany and Europe as well as the development of the multiple streams framework in general. In his dissertation, he analyses the several windows of opportunity for phasing-out nuclear power in Germany, using the multiple streams framework as a theoretical basis. One of his recent papers on environmental policy in Germany during the Merkel II cabinet is published in the peer-reviewed journal German Politics.
Åsa Knaggård is senior lecturer at the Department of Political Science at Lund University. She studies the interrelation between science and politics in multiple contexts and is presently involved in a project on scientific outreach. Recent publications by Knaggård include ‘What do policy-makers do with scientific uncertainty? The incremental character of Swedish climate change policy-making’ (2014) and, together with Håkan Pihl, ‘The Green State and the design of self-binding – lessons from monetary policy’ (in press). Knaggård is affiliated with LUCID (Lund University Centre of Excellence for Integration of Social and Natural Dimensions of Sustainability).
Johanna Kuhlmann is a research assistant at the University of Münster (Germany). Her research focuses on policy analysis, comparative welfare-state research (especially labour-market policy) and integration policy.
Allan McConnell is professor in the Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney, and visiting professor in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde. His area of interest is public policy, with a particular specialism in issues of policy success, policy failure and the politics of crisis. A major solo work is Understanding Policy Success: Rethinking public policy, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Anthony Perl is Professor of Urban Studies and Political Science at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. His research crosses disciplinary and national boundaries to explore policy decisions made about transportation, cities and the environment. He has published in dozens of scholarly journals and authored five books, recently including Studying Public Policy, with Michael Howlett and M. Ramesh, and Transport Revolutions: Moving people and freight without oil, with Richard Gilbert.
Iris Reus is a PhD student at the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences (University of Bamberg). Her research and publications focus on policy analysis and federalism, with special attention to the German Länder.
Harald Sætren is Professor at the Department of Administration and Organisation Theory at the University of Bergen, Norway. His current research interests include policy-design and implementation dynamics, comparative public policy, public-policy theories, organisation theories, organisational change and decision-making. His latest major publications include a special issue on Implementation Research in the Age of Governance, in Public Policy & Administration 2014 (co-edited with Peter Hupe), which includes his paper ‘Implementing the third generation research paradigm in policy implementation research: an empirical assessment’.
Florian Spohr is a research associate at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany (Chair of Comparative Politics). He is currently working on a study of interest-mediation in the German parliament. Recent and forthcoming publications include articles about European constitutional policies, policy analysis and labour-market policies.
Megan K Warnement is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Public Administration in the School of Public and International Affairs at North Carolina State University. Her research interests are in policy change and learning after disasters.
Nikolaos Zahariadis is professor of political science at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA. He has published widely on issues of comparative public policy and European political economy. His latest edited book, Frameworks of the European Union’s Policy Process: Competition and complementarity across the theoretical divide, was published by Routledge in 2013.
