Ambiguity and choice in European public policy

I apply the multiple streams lens, which was originally developed to explain agenda-setting in national systems, to the EU policy formation (agenda-setting and decision-making) process. Choice is the result of coupling by policy entrepreneurs of three relatively independent streams—problems, politics, and policies. Each stream is conceptualized as having a life and dynamics of its own. At fortuitous moments in time, skilled policy entrepreneurs will attempt to couple the streams together by “selling ” their pet package of problem and policy to a receptive political audience. The chances that a particular policy will be adopted increase when all three streams are coupled together. I conclude with implications for the debate of the role of institutions, actors, and ideas in EU policy-making and a clarification of two paradoxes of EU policy. The first paradox stresses the centrality of political power in the absence of institutional hierarchies. The second paradox highlights but also circumscribes the role of epistemic communities in the EU. The process of making policy at the European Union (EU) level is often characterized as fluid, complex, and incomprehensible. It contains all the properties of what Weick (2001) has called a loosely coupled system, whose main characteristic is a high degree of ambiguity. Participants often don’t have clearly formulated goals; they drift in and out of decisions, while the whole process is so complex that it is poorly understood by most. For this reason, scholars have repeatedly suggested that multiple streams is a good way to analyze EU policies. The lens, inspired by Cohen et al’s (1972) garbage can model and Kingdon’s (1995) reformulation of it, assumes ambiguity is an