by Rob DeLeo & Clifton Chow

The Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) was originally developed to explain agenda setting within national government institutions and the United States Congress in particular. However, the last decade plus has seen an explosion of research applying the theory to new governing contexts (e.g., authoritarian states, transnational institutions, local governments) while extending it to the latter stages of the policy process (e.g. policy formulation and implementation). Yet few studies have applied the framework to subnational governments—and U.S. states in particular—a curious omission given the critical role they play in driving policy change within federal systems.  

Our recent article just published in Policy & Politics fills this gap by applying the MSF to the case of climate change adaptation policymaking in the State of Massachusetts. We specifically rely on a mixed methods research design combining a negative binomial regression analysis with process tracing to assess the effect of all three streams as well as policy entrepreneurship on agenda change.  

One of the biggest barriers to conducting agenda setting research at the subnational level is the dearth of granular data documenting changes in issue attention across time. We overcome this by using data from State House News Service, an independent wire service that provides “gavel-to-gavel” coverage of policymaking within the Massachusetts State government. Although our study focuses specifically on Massachusetts, a cursory review of the public record suggests similar news agencies exist in other states as well, although it is unclear whether their coverage is as a comprehensive as State House News Service Massachusetts.