Is the multiple streams framework useful for analysing transnational policy dynamics? The case of EU biofuels policy implementation

The Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) has, since 1984, enabled policy scholars to analyse policymaking under conditions of complexity, ambiguity and contingency. Subsequent developments have helped extend its scope beyond the US political system and take its applicability in policy analysis beyond agenda-setting. In the present paper we seek to develop the MSF further by adding a scalar dimension. Specifically, we wish to explore the prospects for an adapted MSF to contribute to the analysis of transnational policy processes, emerging as a result of globalisation. In open economy policy-making, we posit that domestic policy streams require coupling with transnational problem and politics streams. It also necessitates a step away from overly-geological metaphors, and strict temporally-sequenced policy processes. Furthermore, emergent transnational policy implementation is based on transnational governance networks rather than on traditional governmental hierarchies, creating new roles for state and nonstate actors that the MSF can help apprehend. We apply our revised MSF framework to the creation and implementation of EU biofuels environmental sustainability criteria. Against this adapted MSF backdrop, we argue that the EU itself played the role of policy entrepreneur, building a governance network through the successful coupling of multiple streams across traditional borders of state authority