John Kingdon - Policy Theory summary

John Kingdon is a public policy expert known widely for his multiple streams model of understanding policy process.

Kingdon's mutilpe streams model concentrates on the timing and flow of policy making and implementation - taking a bigger-picture perspective - in contrast to other models which focus on individual steps or components of the policy process.

The value of Kingdon's model is that it helps to understand the importance of context - political-climate, timing, and changing realities that must be dealt with in the policy and agenda setting process.

The model is particularly useful for understanding agenda-setting - why some issues become high priority and have tangible policy measures developed and why other issues are sidelined and focused on to a lesser extent, or not at all. 

We can apply that to the issue of inactive policy changes for Climate Change and in tackling Global Warming in the 21st century. 

Kingdon wrote the book Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, which investigates how society's issues end up on the government agenda as public policy issues. It discusses how issues are brought to the attention of legislators in the first place, how potential solutions are developed, and how and why individual issues are carried through the policy process and result in tangible policy measures.

Source: http://www.metagora.org/training/encyclopedia/Kingdon.html