HLTH 6280 Week 8 Multiple Streams Frame Application Example

Frame Application: Testing the Multiple Streams Framework on the 2019 Federal Tobacco 21 Law, Where It Fits the Case and the Three Places It Does Not

Student Name

Walden University

HLTH 6280: Policy and Politics in American Political Institutions

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Frame Application: Testing the Multiple Streams Framework on the 2019 Federal Tobacco 21 Law, Where It Fits the Case and the Three Places It Does Not

The Model

The multiple streams framework treats policy change as what happens when three mostly separate currents meet. In the problem stream, conditions become problems through indicators, focusing events and feedback. In the policy stream, specialists develop and soften up alternatives over years. In the politics stream, public mood, interest group pressure and turnover in office change what is feasible. Change happens when a policy window opens and a policy entrepreneur couples a ready solution to a recognized problem at a politically favorable moment (Kingdon, 2011). The framework is among the most widely applied in policy studies: a content analysis found 311 peer-reviewed applications from 2000 to 2013 across 65 countries and 22 policy areas, while noting inconsistency in how its concepts were operationalized (Jones et al., 2016). This paper applies the framework to a case traced earlier in the term, the federal law raising the minimum tobacco sale age to 21, enacted in December 2019, and reports where the framework does not fit.

Where the Framework Fits

The Problem Stream

The framework's account of how conditions become problems fits well. The 2018 national youth survey found vaping among high schoolers nearly doubled, 11.7% to 20.8%, in a single year (Gentzke et al., 2019). That is a textbook indicator: a systematic measure whose sudden change draws attention to a condition that had been treated as routine.

The Policy Stream

The policy stream also fits. Raising the age to 21 was not invented in 2019. A 2015 Institute of Medicine report had modeled its effects, projecting reduced initiation and lower smoking prevalence over time (Institute of Medicine [IOM], 2015), and states and localities had adopted it before Congress acted. The framework predicts that alternatives which have been softened up in the specialist community survive selection, and age 21 had been tested, costed and adopted locally.

Solutions Chasing Problems

The framework's claim that solutions often precede and chase problems fits strikingly. The indicator that rose was e-cigarette use; the solution was an age limit designed in a period when cigarettes dominated the debate. Age 21 attached itself to the new problem because it was ready, not because it was designed for vaping.

Misfit 1: The Window Was a Calendar, and the Framework Treats It as Background

The framework distinguishes windows opened by problems from those opened by politics, and it recognizes predictable windows such as budget cycles. In this case, however, the decisive window was purely procedural: the expiration of temporary government funding in late December and the need to extend expiring health programs. The provisions became law inside the December omnibus, Pub. L. No. 116-94, in its title extending expiring health programs. No change in the problem stream or in national mood opened that window; the fiscal calendar did. The framework can label this a predictable window, but its explanatory weight rests on attention and mood, and here attention had little to do with timing. The provisions had been ready since July and waited five months for a vehicle.

Misfit 2: The Text Was Settled Before the Coupling, in a Venue the Framework Barely Sees

The framework is strongest on agenda setting and weaker on the formulation of specific language. In this case the decisive drafting happened in HELP's June package rewrite of S. 1895 (Lower Health Care Costs Act, 2019). That substitute already contained the enforcement structure for states, the rulemaking deadline and the under-30 age verification that the law enacted. The December coupling attached finished text to a vehicle; it did not shape the text. The framework has no category for a committee drafting the decision months before the window opens and then leaving it on a shelf.

Misfit 3: The Entrepreneur and the Politics Stream Were the Same Person

The framework treats the policy entrepreneur as someone who invests resources to couple streams, and the politics stream as a separate set of forces, including who holds power. Here the lead sponsor of the Senate bill was the majority leader (Tobacco-Free Youth Act, 2019), who also controls the Senate floor schedule and made the December motion to concur in the year-end package. In the framework's terms, the entrepreneur did not need to wait for the politics stream to turn favorable, because the entrepreneur occupied the position that defines the politics stream in the Senate. The assumption that the streams flow independently, which the framework treats as central, breaks down when the same actor sits in two of them. A second set of sponsors, behind the rival Tobacco to 21 Act, contributed language that reached the law (Tobacco to 21 Act, 2019), which suggests entrepreneurship was distributed rather than located in one person, another feature the framework's single-entrepreneur image handles poorly.

A Note on Measurement

The misfits depend partly on how the framework's concepts are measured, a problem the meta-review of applications identified across the literature (Jones et al., 2016). If "policy window" is defined broadly enough to include any deadline, the first misfit disappears; if "entrepreneur" can be a collective of sponsors and committee staff, the third weakens. Defining the concepts that loosely, however, would make the framework impossible to contradict. This paper uses the narrower definitions in which windows open through problems or politics and entrepreneurs are identifiable actors, because those are the definitions that give the framework explanatory content.

What the Test Shows

The framework explains why age 21 was on the agenda in 2019: a sharp indicator, a ready solution and a favorable political moment. It explains less about why the law reads as it does and why it passed when it did. Those answers lie in institutional procedure, committee drafting and fiscal deadlines, which the framework treats as context rather than cause. For this case, the framework is a good account of agenda entry and a thin account of enactment. The misfits are not reasons to discard it; they mark where a procedural account must take over.

References

Gentzke, A. S., Creamer, M., Cullen, K. A., Ambrose, B. K., Willis, G., Jamal, A., & King, B. A. (2019). Vital signs: Tobacco product use among middle and high school students, United States, 2011-2018. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 68(6), 157-164. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6806e1

Institute of Medicine. (2015). Public health implications of raising the minimum age of legal access to tobacco products. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/18997

Jones, M. D., Peterson, H. L., Pierce, J. J., Herweg, N., Bernal, A., Lamberta Raney, H., & Zahariadis, N. (2016). A river runs through it: A multiple streams meta-review. Policy Studies Journal, 44(1), 13-36. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12115

Kingdon, J. W. (2011). Agendas, alternatives, and public policies (Updated 2nd ed.). Longman.

Lower Health Care Costs Act, S. 1895, 116th Cong. (2019). https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1895

Tobacco to 21 Act, S. 1258, 116th Cong. (2019). https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1258

Tobacco-Free Youth Act, S. 1541, 116th Cong. (2019). https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1541