Kingdon at 40: multiple streams, multiple flaws

Despite its widespread use, there is confusion in the literature about two key aspects of Kingdon’s so-called Multiple Streams Approach. Firstly, whilst some argue that Kingdon developed an agenda-setting framework, for others he developed a theory of policy change, and for others still a theory of both. Secondly, despite policy windows and coupling being the most crucial and popular concepts of the framework, ambiguous and conflicting definitions of both terms are used, sometimes by the same authors. Further, although scholars have established guidelines which advocate a specific interpretation of their meaning, those citing such guidelines employ different definitions in their work. Sometimes, they do so in the belief that these align with Kingdon’s, suggesting that Kingdon himself has offered interpretations that differ from the ones advocated in current guidelines. Through an in-depth critical analysis of Kingdon’s works, previously overlooked, this article demonstrates that these issues originate in such a corpus. More specifically, this article shows that Kingdon presents his framework as a theory of agenda-setting whilst operationalising it as theory of policy change, providing a vast number of ambiguous and inconsistent definitions of policy windows and coupling. The article concludes by making several recommendations to strengthen the framework’s theoretical foundations.