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February 11 - February 23, 2021
Compared to the US presidential system, parliamentary systems have been described as more “orderly” (Zahariadis 2003, 1), and thus less well suited for MSF analysis.
parties are the key political actors in most parliamentary systems although they do not figure very prominently in the original formulation of the MSF.
although parties might in principle be conservative, liberal, or socialist, it is often very difficult to derive preferences on specific policy proposals from these ideological positions.
In the political stream, party discipline and coalitions, which are typical of many parliamentary systems, are particularly relevant (especially during decision coupling) because political entrepreneurs seeking to obtain majorities will not focus on individual policymakers but rather on party leaders in these systems.
The fact that parties—and interest groups (Rozbicka and Spohr 2016)—are relevant in two streams does not contradict the assumption of independence of streams as long as the two roles are kept distinct analytically.
MSF is a good candidate to bridge the divide between domestic and foreign policy. The key problem is to link domestic and external variables.
Ultimately, foreign policy outcomes need to be acceptable to domestic audiences who will ratify the solutions.
Zahariadis (2005) probes the utility and explanatory power of three lenses, MSF, rational internationalism, and two-level games, yielding some intriguing findings.
although MSF provides the better overall fit because it more accurately explains a greater number of occurrences, it systematically underexplains cooperative policy.
emotion as a tool for anchoring foreign policies around specific options, making it exceedingly difficult to take corrective action even when there is widespread agreement that the policy is not producing desirable results.
MSF argues that although the streams are not completely independent of one another, they can be viewed as each having a life of its own.
Problems rise and fall on the government’s agenda regardless of whether they are solvable or have been solved. Similarly, people generate solutions, not necessarily because they have identified a particular problem, but because the solution happens to answer a problem that fits their values, beliefs, or material well-being.
Critics, including Mucciaroni (1992, 2013) and Robinson and Eller (2010), disagree, questioning the appropriateness of conceptualizing independent streams. The streams can be more fruitfully viewed as interdependent, Mucciaroni maintains, and changes in one stream can trigger or reinforce changes in another.
Stream independence is a conceptual device. It has the advantage of enabling researchers to uncover rather than assume rationality.
streams don’t have to be independent, they only need to flow as if they are independent.
Critics claim that MSF’s core concepts lack clear definitions and they do not generate falsifiable hypotheses
true that Kingdon in his original formulation of the framework did not derive hypotheses. This does not mean, however, that it is impossible to derive hypotheses.
Streams and windows, primeval soups and criteria of survival, national mood and focusing events are all somewhat difficult to measure and seem to invite storytelling rather than rigorous empirical analysis.
MSF’s concepts can be defined with substantial precision.
MSF presumes that all actors, policymakers and policy entrepreneurs, have unclear preferences concerning the vast majority of policies. On the other hand, any policymaker can become a policy entrepreneur for a specific proposal.
Another important criticism of MSF is that it lacks some elements. Of particular relevance seem to be political institutions and path dependence
nothing in the MSF per se precludes the integration of these elements into the framework
Institutions affect the integration of policy communities and define whose agreement a political entrepreneur must obtain during decision coupling.
path dependence can be understood as one of the criteria of survival that affect a proposal’s chances of becom...
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Another relevant factor that is missing from MSF—and many other policy process theories—is the mass media
The media’s role is indeed a topic that has not yet been theorized from an MSF perspective.
the vast majority of MSF studies are case studies
To date, the methods applied in quantitative and medium- to large-n MSF applications are regression analysis (for examples, see Liu et al. 2011; Travis and Zahariadis 2002) and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) (for examples, see Sager and Rielle 2013; Sager and Thomann 2016).
assessing the combined effect of the framework’s five key concepts on agenda change is next to impossible in a regression setting because this leaves researchers with the task of interpreting a specification of thirty-one independent variables, including a fivefold and various four-, three-, and twofold interaction terms.
Four issues deserve particular attention in future MSF-related research: (1) further theoretical and definitional refinement; (2) more systematic empirical applications; (3) an adaptation and empirical application of the framework to autocratic regimes; and (4) more MSF-inspired research on global policy.
The operational definitions of when the streams are ready for coupling need to be further refined. This is particularly true with regard to the political stream.
MSF scholars need to find ways to test the framework more systematically.
Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET) seeks to explain a simple observation: although generally marked by stability and incrementalism, political processes occasionally produce large-scale departures from the past. Stasis, rather than crisis, typically characterizes most policy areas, but crises do occur.
most policy models have been designed to explain either the stability or the change. Punctuated Equilibrium Theory encompasses both.
It emphasizes two related elements of the policy process: issue definition and agenda setting. As issues are defined in public discourse in different ways and rise and fall in the public agenda, existing policies can be either reinforced or questioned. Reinforcement creates great obstacles to anything but modest change, whereas questioning policies at the most fundamental levels creates opportunities for major reversals.
attention spans are limited in governments,
Complexity in political systems implies that destabilizing events, the accumulation of unaddressed grievances, or other political processes can change the “normal” process of equilibrium and status quo on the basis of negative feedback (which dampens down activities) into those rare periods when positive feedback (which reinforces activities) leads to explosive change for a short while and the establishment of a new policy equilibrium.
theories of conflict expansion and agenda setting have stressed the difficulty disfavored groups and new ideas face in breaking through the established system of policymaking
The conservative nature of national political systems favors the status quo; multiple veto points, separation of powers, and other equilibrium-supporting factors have long been recognized.
The key insight of PET is that, as a corollary of any system with a status quo bias, policy change will rarely be moderate: inertial forces for change are eliminated or kept to the smallest scale until and unless they are overpowered. The system generates a pattern of change characterized by stability most of the time, with dramatic shifts when the inertial forces are overcome.
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(1) policymaking both makes leaps and undergoes periods of near stasis as issues emerge on and recede from the public agenda, (2) American political institutions exacerbate this tendency toward punctuated equilibria, and (3) policy images play a critical role in expanding issues beyond the control of the specialists and special interests that occupy what they termed “policy monopolies.”
In short, American political institutions were conservatively designed to resist many efforts at change and thus to make mobilizations necessary to overcoming established interests. The result has been institutionally reinforced stability interrupted by bursts of change.
No political system features continuous discussion on all issues that confront it. Rather, discussions of political issues are usually disaggregated into a number of issue-oriented policy subsystems. These subsystems can be dominated by a single interest, can undergo competition among several interests, can disintegrate over time, or can build up their independence from others
The explanation for the same political institutions producing both stasis and punctuations can be found in the processes of agenda setting—especially the dynamics produced by bounded rationality and serial information processing.
Herbert Simon (1957, 1977, 1983, 1985) developed the notion of bounded rationality to explain how human organizations, including those in business and government, operate. He distinguished between parallel and serial processing. Individuals devote conscious attention to one thing at a time, so decision making must be done in serial fashion, one thing after the other. Organizations are somewhat more flexible. Some decision structures are capable of handling many issues simultaneously, in parallel. Political systems, like humans, cannot simultaneously consider all the issues that face them at
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The intersection of the parallel- processing capabilities of the policy subsystems and the serial-processing needs of the macro-political system creates the nonincremental dynamics of lurching that we often observe in many policy areas. Agenda access does not guarantee major change, however, because reform is often blunted in the decision making stage. But this access is a precondition for major policy punctuations.
When dominated by a single interest, a subsystem is best thought of as a policy monopoly.
Because a successful policy monopoly systematically dampens pressures for change, we say that it contains a negative feedback process. Yet policy monopolies are not invulnerable forever.
If the citizens excluded from a monopoly remain apathetic, the institutional arrangement usually remains constant, and policy is likely to change only slowly (the negative feedback process). As pressure for change builds up, it may be resisted successfully for a time. But if pressures are sufficient, they may lead to a massive intervention by previously uninvolved political actors and governmental institutions. Generally, this requires a substantial change in the supporting policy image.
new actors may insist on rewriting the rules and changing the balance of power, which will be reinforced by new institutional structures as previously dominant agencies and institutions are forced to share their power with groups or agencies that gain new legitimacy.
