Academic literature on the topic 'Kingdon's policy streams'

This chapter examines John Kingdon’s bookAgendas, Alternatives, and American Public Policy, considered an alternative to the more technocratic existing theories of policy-making. It begins by summarizing what the book says about American public policy and looking at the interlocking innovations that made it so important. In particular, it analyses two political processes that differ from the better known aspects of politics: agenda-setting and alternative specification. It then turns its attention to the second conceptual innovation inAgendas: the three streams of policy, politics, and problems. The chapter also describes coupling and the window of opportunity as potentially the most theoretically difficult parts of the book. In addition, it discusses potential theoretical directions that would go beyond further replication ofAgendas.

The incorporation of information systems in government agencies is a process that started several decades ago, but it has sped up its pace due to the evolution of information technology and communications. This process could be characterized as being responsive to specific or by-sector requirements without policies or guiding principles. To this date, national and local government agencies obtain, record and process information in order to accomplish their duties. Their ways illustrate a fragmented scheme, noticeably based on the criteria of a self-referenced, bureaucratic state. Accordingly, the state has a myriad of information systems which are frequently disconnected. In spite of this, their remarkable evolution is a valuable asset that policy makers should consider. When the concept of electronic government emerged in the late nineties, it came to bridge the gap in the creation of public policies regarding the use of state information technologies and communications. However, electronic government it is not just limited to technology applications; it also introduces an innovative view on state modernization. The latter is presented from an external point of view that adopts the citizen’s perspective and emphasizes the need for coordination and integration in inter-agency processes. The development of electronic government has two basic approaches: electronic government initiatives and electronic government policies. The first approach resembles the traditional incorporation of information systems in government agencies, where multiple electronic government initiatives respond to specific vertical requirements. The second alternative incorporates a holistic view intended to build a global model of State through an electronic government public policy. This chapter focuses on the political process leading to the development of an electronic government policy, and it is illustrated by the analysis of the political process that led to the development of electronic government policy in Uruguay. The analysis uses John W. Kingdon’s (1995) multiple streams model, a conceptual approach that is intended to explain the mainstreaming of policies in the governmental agenda. The chapter further proposes that the multiple streams model could be extremely useful as a framework to be used on an ex ante basis for advocates of electronic government policy making.

The Chicago Alliance for Equity in Computer Science is a research-practice partnership that is working to broaden the participation of Chicago Public Schools’ students in computer science. For this study, we applied the multiple streams approach from theories of the policy process (Kingdon, 1995; Zahariadis, 2014) to explain how the COVID-19 pandemic helped open a policy window for the continued use of synchronous online instruction during the implementation of an equity-centered computer science credit recovery option in Chicago.