THE ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL POLICY TRANSFER WITHIN THE MULTIPLE STREAMS APPROACH: THE CASE OF SMART ELECTRICITY METERING IN AUSTRALIA
| Published date | 01 September 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12259 |
| Author | HEATHER LOVELL |
| Date | 01 September 2016 |
doi : 10. 1111/p adm .12259
THE ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL POLICY TRANSFER
WITHIN THE MULTIPLE STREAMS APPROACH: THE
CASE OF SMART ELECTRICITY METERING IN
AUSTRALIA
HEATHER LOVELL
This article draws on Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Approach (MSA) to consider international, not
just domestic, ows of policy. It is argued that using the MSA in conjunction with international
policy transfer and mobility theories allows for a fuller explanation of the development of smart
electricity metering policy in Australia. The MSA is based originally on empirical research within
a single country – the USA – in the late 1970s, and all three of the ‘streams’ identied as important
to policy change – problems, politics and policy– are conceptualized as domestic. While recent
scholarship has broadened the application of the MSA beyond nation state boundaries, it is argued
that there is scope to further develop such ideas. In particular, the notion of policy mobility is
introduced to capture issues about the globalization of policy, the role of non-state actors and the
material substance of policy.
INTRODUCTION
In the decades since the late 1970s and 1980s when the Multiple Streams Approach (MSA)
was rst developed by Kingdon (1984), a trend of increased international transfer of pol-
icy has been observed (Marsh and Sharman 2009; Peck and Theodore 2010; Benson and
Jordan 2011; Stone 2012). The overall objective of the article is to consider the value of fur-
ther integrating ideas from scholarship on the international movement of policy with the
MSA, building on the work of Bache (2013; Bache and Reardon 2013) and Cairney (2009,
2012) among others. The MSA was originally developed in order to explain domestic pol-
icy agenda-setting in conditions of high ambiguity (Kingdon 1984; Zahariadis 2014; Jones
et al. 2015; Cairney and Jones 2016). With a now well-documented trend towards the more
rapid global circulation of policy ideas and best practice programmes (Marsh and Shar-
man 2009; Peck and Theodore 2010; Benson and Jordan 2011;Stone 2012), alongside greater
consideration of multi-level governance (see for example Hooghe and Marks 2003; Betsill
and Bulkeley 2006), there has been a shift in MSA scholarship to consider other spatial
scales of policy making (Jones et al. 2015). Bache and Reardon, for instance, have focused
on the international sphere, and have considered the value of marrying concepts from
international policy transfer and diffusion with the MSA, acknowledging how:
Kingdon’s analysis does not discuss the importance of transnational policy communities through which ideas
are oated around and developed. This may be a consequence of time (1980s) and space (US) in relation to
Kingdon’s initial study or perhaps to his case studies (health and transportation), all of which would point
to largely domestic policy communities. But since his initial study, policy communities in many policy areas have
become more transnational. (Bache and Reardon 2013, p. 907, emphasis added)
The article builds on these existing contributions in a number of ways. First, the core aim
is to further develop the MSA so that it better encapsulates the international dimensions
of policy, by drawing not only on policy transfer theory but also a set of related ideas
Heather Lovell is at the School of Social Sciences, University of Tasmania (UTAS), Hobart, Australia, and is also at the
Institute of Geography and the Lived Environment, School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, UK.
Public Administration Vol.94, No. 3, 2016 (754–768)
© 2016 The Authors. Public Administration published by John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and
distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercialand no modications or adaptations are made.
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