From Multiple Streams to Muddling Through: Policy Process Theories and “Field of Vision”

Abstract

AbstractContemporary policy process theories are used to explain important aspects of the policy process, including the emergence or change of policies over time. However, these theories vary notably in their composition, such as their scope of analytical space, key concepts and assumptions, models of individual decision-making, and relationships between process-relevant factors and actors. There is little guidance on which theory may be best suited for explaining particular policy outcomes or how the different elements of the theories influence their analytical power. To begin to address this gap in the literature, a comparative analysis applied four established policy process theories to explain the emergence of the same policy outcome, a set of environmental policies associated with the North American Free Trade Agreement, while varying the analytical space or “field of vision” spatially and temporally. Overall, each theory demonstrated strong explanatory power but within analytical spaces of different scales, which indicates that the dimensionality aspects aspects the analytical space of policy process theories may contribute to a convergence in shared knowledge.