Use of metaphors is a staple feature of how we understand policy processes -none more so than the use of 'policy stages'/'cycles' and 'multiple streams'. Yet even allowing for the necessary parsimony of metaphors, the former is often criticised for its lack of 'real world' engagement with agency, power, ideology, turbulence and complexity, while the latter focuses only on agenda-setting but at times has been utilised, with limited results, to understand later stages of the policy process. This article seeks to explore and advance the opportunities for combining both and applying them to the policy-formation and decisionmaking stages of policy making. In doing so it examines possible three, four and five stream models. It argues that a five stream confluence model provides the highest analytical value because it retains the simplicity of metaphors (combining elements of two of the most prominent models in policy studies) while also helping capture some of the more complex and subtle aspects of policy processes, including policy styles and nested systems of governance.

The stages/policy cycle, multiple streams, and Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) approaches to understanding policy processes, all have analytical value although also attracting substantive criticism. An obvious direction for research is to determine whether the multiple streams framework and the ACF can be refined and applied to other dimensions of policy-making set out in the policy cycle model. This article argues that extending and modifying Kingdon's framework beyond the agenda-setting stage is best suited to this endeavour. Doing so makes it possible to bring these three approaches into alignment and enhances our understanding, although retaining the core insights of each.

For close to three decades multiple frameworks of policy-making have served as competitive characterizations of policy processes. All claim to provide accounts that capture diverse factors such as changing governance norms, actors and ideas which drive programme interventions and policy outputs. Paradoxically, the resilience of different models such as the policy cycle framework and the multiple streams framework has been accompanied by numerous critiques that they are "incomplete" and even divorced from the real world. This article presents an effort to synthesize and reconcile these frameworks in which the appeal and strengths of each can be retained while going some way to overcoming their weaknesses and limitations. It does so through the introduction of an integrative metaphor for policy-making -what Wayne Parsons termed "weaving" -which can be applied to all stages of public policy, and is flexible enough to cope with issues such as power, complexity and critical junctures while reconciling different groupings and sets of actors highlighted as significant policy players in earlier models. It elaborates this framework before applying it by way of illustration to one of the most controversial policy initiatives in modern British history: the 1989-93 poll tax. The article and case study highlight the potential for its general application in policy studies.

The importance of horizontal coordinating governance arrangements in the internationalized policy domains that occur more frequently in the present globalizing era justi®es building further on middle-level theories that draw on the policy community/ policy network concepts. This reconceptualization, however, requires an explicit integration of policy paradigms and political ideas into policy community theory and careful attention to the dierential impact of varying governance patterns in internationalized policy domains. This article pursues these objectives beginning with a review of existing literature on policy communities and policy networks. Next, drawing on recent research on policy paradigms and political ideas, it suggests how policy community concepts might be adapted for the study of policy change. Four types of internationalized policy environments are then identi®ed and their implications for policy communities and policy networks are assessed. The article concludes by introducing the concept of policy community mediators and discussing how they might shape the relationships among multiple policy communities.As the coming century approaches, many public policy domains increasingly feature institutionalized connections between sub-national, national, regional and international levels. Such complexity challenges scholars in both international relations and public policy studies to look beyond sub-disciplinary boundaries and to reconsider theoretical concepts. Two concepts developed in comparative public policy, policy communities and policy networks, merit adaptation for the study of policy making in internationalized policy domains. The importance of horizontal coordinating governance arrangements in internationalized domains justi®es building further on middle-level theories that draw on these concepts. In addition, this reconceptualization requires an # Political Studies Association 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers,

This article explores the Canadian government's trend toward outsourcing policy analytical and advisory services over the 1980s and 1990s. We test three (not mutually exclusive) hypotheses about why such policy consulting has increased. A combination of New Public Management values and knowledge expansion are shown to drive this trend. In the late 1990s, the federal government significantly decreased the number of in-house operational and administrative support workers. These reductions enabled the government to contract out more while a managerial and administrative cadre remained in place to manage the contracts. The main implication is that contracting out analytical and advisory services does not necessarily lower costs, but does aid government in pursuing other objectives. The growth in Canadian policy consulting corresponded with a stabilization of public service personnel expenditures, a focus on leaner government, and an ability to rely on outside specialists for objective, expert advice.