We suggest attention to policy regimes provides a fruitful means for joining the contributions of scholars who study policy processes with those who are concerned with governance challenges. Our research synthesis underscores the limits of existing theorizing about policy processes for problems that span multiple areas of policy and highlights the prospects for and limitations of governing beyond the boundaries of subsystems. We suggest new avenues for theorizing and research in policy processes based on the concept of a boundary-spanning policy regime. We develop notions about this type of policy regime within the context of the broader literature about regimes in political science, discuss the forces that shape the strength and durability of such regimes, and provide a variety of examples. This synthesis challenges the focus of policy process scholars on subsystems and broadens the traditional focus on policymaking to consideration of the dynamics of governing.

We call on policy scholars to take seriously the role of policies as governing instruments and to consider more fully the factors that shape their political impacts. We suggest that the lens provided by regime perspectives is a useful way for advancing the understanding of these considerations. As a descriptive undertaking, the regime lens can be used to construct a conceptual map that considers the constellation of ideas, institutional arrangements, and interests that are involved in addressing policy problems. As an analytic lens, regime perspectives can be used to understand how and with what effect policies set in place feedback processes that shape policy legitimacy, coherence, and durability. Together, these provide new insights into policy implementation and the interplay of policy and politics in governing. Regime perspectives provide avenues for asking and answering the “big questions” about the quality of governing arrangements and the sustainability of policies that were important considerations for the development of the field of policy studies in the 1960s, but have since waned as foci for policy scholarship.

In this article, we trace the evolution of punctuated equilibrium theories of the policy process to the development of a full theory of government information processing. Noting that punctuated equilibrium is one realization of a larger theory of government information processing, we outline a research agenda for the study of agenda setting, policy dynamics, and information flows in the policy process. In doing so, we relate the study of government information processing to such important features of American government as inter‐institutional dynamics and delegation in the policy process.

This research addresses the strength of the homeland security policy regime that was constructed after the terrorist attacks of September 2001. We argue that homeland security provides a preeminent example of the challenges of developing policy regimes that focus policymaking on a common goal across diverse subsystems. All the ingredients for fashioning a powerful regime were in place after the terrorist attacks of September 2001-a common purpose, engaged stakeholders, and institutional redesign. But for a variety of reasons that we discuss, the results are far from cohesive. The lessons we draw are more general ones regarding factors that influence the strength of boundary-spanning policy regimes.