Participation in Policy Streams: Testing the Separation of Problems and Solutions in Subnational Policy Systems

Abstract

The multiple streams theory of national policymaking has been influential in the study of public administration and public policy-if not without a fair bit of controversy. While some laud the model for its openness to the important role of policy entrepreneurs and the irrationalities of the decisionmaking processes, others criticize the model for its lack of readily testable propositions. This article identifies a series of testable propositions in the multiple streams model (particularly that discussed by Kingdon). We assess whether participation in local policymaking (focusing on school district policymaking related to violence prevention) is characterized by "separate streams" of participants or is dominated by organized participants like interest groups or policy specialists. We found evidence of unity (rather than separation) in the policymaking process and scant evidence of elite, organized interests dominating the policymaking process. The results call into question a key assumption of the multiple streams model. and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ. based on the confluence of a series of "streams" of organizational inputs. The result was the garbage can model (GCM) of organizational decision making. Kingdon (1995) applied this model of organizational decision making to the policymaking processes that pluralist and elitist theorists fought to explain. Kingdon argued that policy processes are neither elite nor pluralist in their entirety. Instead, pluralist forces and elite forces compete for control of separate "streams" of policymaking activity. The elite and pluralist models, in Kingdon's view, were both correct, but each only described parts of the policy process. The problem stream included avenues for broad participation, though still far from the mass politics envisioned by some pluralists, while the solution stream was populated almost entirely by elite policy specialists.Kingdon's account of the policy process has become a popular one in the study of policy dynamics 1 but has been subject to considerable criticism. The GCM, used by Kingdon as the backbone of his theory of policymaking, is predicated on the randomness of organizational decision making. The underlying theory makes very few falsifiable predictions about organizational behavior-instead relying on instability and seeming randomness of the policymaking process as the key expectation. Kingdon's (1995) version of the GCM of policymaking does make falsifiable predictions about the policy process in its inclusion of components of the pluralist and elite theories of policy. In this article, we assess some of those assumptions-the hypothesis that participation in policymaking processes (particularly in administrative settings) consists of two separate streams of participants bearing "problems" and "solutions," respectively, as well as hypotheses about the role of policy specialists in the policymaking process. By analyzing data about violence prevention policymaking in educational organizations, we assess the "separateness" and "specialis...

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“…First, the fluid participation of government officials affects rationality and predictability. For instance, as Robinson and Eller (2010) explained, participants at any meeting may vary considerably, and different officials may devote different levels of energy to the decision-making process. In one case, the government had sent more than five officials to try to mediate with the government (SCMP, 2013), but all of these officials had different goals.…”

“…Second, in most situations, preferences are unclear and problematic, mainly because they are poorly defined or articulated, and there are multiple objectives (Robinson and Eller (2010). For instance, the chief executive of Hong Kong once commented to the media on 4 September 2012 vaguely, -between withdrawing and not withdrawing the subject, there is much room for discussion between the government and those opposed to the subject.‖ Most people perceived this as an empty gesture, and the chief executive refused to further clarify his meaning (MPD, 2012a).…”

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“…Interestingly, Travis and Zahariadis () made note of the lack of quantitative work being produced using multi‐streams model and our research found that the scenario has not changed since. Our search found only one another journal study (by Robinson and Eller ), which argued that Kingdon's model does provide falsifiable predictions, and that employed a quantitative model to test these predictions. Some other studies (see e.g., Kubiak, Sobek, and Rose ; Rios and Meyer ) used quantitative data along with qualitative data in their studies.…”

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“…In a study of United Nations peacekeeping as an example of garbage can policymaking, Lipson (2007) also found that arriving at solutions was a result of temporal sorting as opposed to rationally fitting solutions with policies. Robinson and Eller (2010) discuss the Multiple Streams garbage can model (Zahariadis 2007) which emphasizes that policy makers work under significant time constraints and that the streams feeding into policy (problems, solutions, politics) are often independent from one another. There tends to be significant ambiguity in garbage cans due to fluid participation, problematic preferences, and unclear technology (204).…”