Kingdon excerpt from Agendas Alternatives and Public Policie

Kingdon, excerpt from \"Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies\" :

This is a famous reading about the policy process and how action is taken. A naïve model of decisions from governments (or other large organizations) would suggest that they look at an issue, consider all possible solutions, and then pick the one that has the highest expected benefit. However, this hardly seems to reflect the way governments actually take action. Kingdon introduced the “three streams” model here, which includes useful concepts like the “policy window” and “policy entrepreneur”.

Answer the questions below:

What is the importance of agendas here?

What are the three streams and how are they related to policy formation?

If Kingdon is correct here, should we expect this process to get us to the best outcome? A good outcome?

What types of outcomes does it favor?

Does all of this sound right to you or do you have criticisms of the concepts?

Solution

1. Agenda is the list of subjects, or, problems to which people closely associated with the Government officials, and, the Government officials pay serious attention to at a given time. Out of all the problems, or, conceivable subjects, attend seriously to rather than others. The process narrows the set to the one that can be the focus of attention. One can study what the agenda is composed of, and, why it changes. The agenda set could have major legislative initiatives, international crises, major budgetary decisions, and, state of the economy, specialized agendas for health, or, transportation officials, etc.

2. Streams of policies, problems, and, politics

The streams are independent to one another. Each stream develops according to its own dynamics, and, rules. The streams are joined at critical junctures. Policy changes come out of coupling of policy proposals, politics, and, problems. These streams develop largely independently but these are not absolutely independent. The policy window gives them an opportunity to push solutions.

3. Central level discussions and nothing concrete at the operational level. At the decision level, financing policy can produce good outcomes. For instance, healthcare & Governance.

4. It favours good outcomes. Kingdon refers to perceptions of problems. World Bank uses this concept in Africa to improve the quantity, and, quality of healthcare delivery. The streams consist of analysis, proposed solutions, problems, and, responses.

5. Criticisms of the concept