The multiple streams framework beyond democracies: Reflections on existing and future research

Since Kingdon’s 1984 canonical study of federal-level agenda setting in the USA, the multiple streams framework has been used to examine not just other democracies, but also autocracies. Based on a dataset of 101 English language journal articles, we provide an overview of how the MSF has been used to examine policy processes in autocracies. Priorities for future MSF research on autocracies are (1) integrating the literature on authoritarianism (2) shifting from case studies to examining individual MSF elements across time, jurisdictions, and policy areas. To this end, we present a list of theory-grounded expectations and corresponding research questions pertaining to each MSF element. To make it easier for future MSF studies to connect their findings to prior research on authoritarian settings, we provide a list of existing MSF journal articles on autocracies.