There are many daunting issues faced by policy-makers in their bid to select between alternative policy options, which are meant to enhance social change. While on the one hand policy elites may be genuinely willling to bring about 'good' change, they could also be demonised by their own personal interest, 'politics as usual', and 'crisis situation' to formulate policies to their own advantage. They also, in some cases, do not trust researchers to tell them what they want to hear! Scientists, on the other hand, are bedeviled by their own shorcomings as well. These include what I refer to as the 'silo effect', excessive fixation on career advancement and personal gains, poor quality of research, inability to simplify research information, which users could relate with, etc. The questions of how to resolve these challenges, therefore, remain.
Hi, Oluwatoyin,
The multiple streams framework (Kingdon (1984) Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies) suggests that there are three independent streams that are relevant to policy making. The first stream is awareness of the problem usually created by a problem suddenly becoming worse of some sort of focusing event that draws attention. The political stream is the degree to which the problem becomes politically relevant due to general public interest, or more likely, by the sustained influence of interest groups and political contributors. The policy stream refers to the role that research might play in suggesting a solution to the problem.
When two of the streams come together, there may be a window to influence policy making, but most research must simply wait for an opportune moment. Very few policy makers care about the science unless the problem has become somewhat acute and a solution is politically relevant.
Sticking to the traditional approach of dealing with current issues leads to zero adoption rate, however shifting from the traditional way of dealing with challenges to systems thinking approach of dealing with the root cause involving all stakeholders leads to adoption since its their own mental model.
The systems thinking approach is a transdisciplinary ‘framework’ that addresses the root causes of challenges by viewing ‘problems’ as parts of an overall system, in contrast to the linear approach of identifying ‘quick fixes’ to specific parts. ‘Quick Fixes’ leads to the danger of ‘silo mentality’ in which a fix ‘here’ simply shifts the problem to ‘there’ and ‘organizational myopia’ in which a fix ‘now’ gives rise to a much bigger problem to fix ‘later’. Therefore, a systems thinker frames a problem in terms of seeing the whole forest, instead of focusing on a particular tree. They see beyond the details to the context of relationships in which they are embedded. Today, it is widely used by academics and practitioners alike to address sustainability challenges. Research should adopt an approach systems thinking; ‘teaching to transfer’ the art of interconnected thinking with stakeholders during the workshop, and these respondents are also involved in policy revision and formulation in their own locality. These stakeholders when familiarised with and educated about the art of interconnected thinking will be the facilitators of the art of interconnected thinking in policy formulations including yourself at governmental level.
Many thanks for your insightful thoughts, Prof Kindle! I like the idea of the three streams, which as you put them, are awarenes of the problem, the political and policy streams. I think this exposition bears semblance with the ideas I was trying to push. The challenge here is how to synergise the two streams to influence the third in a healthy manner. To be sure, what constitutes a problem to one individal may not necessarily be a problem to another person. In addition to certain unknown variables, pushing one's own agenda, perhaps due to some rent-seeking interference and tendencies within the sphere of the science-policy interface may have constitued a major barrier to finding a veriatble policy solution to a particular societal problem.
Many thanks, Arthur! The 'we' means researchers and academics. Thanks once again.
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