Why do some solutions become serious policy contenders while others simply fade away? Utilizing the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF), in this chapter I unpack the concept of ‘value acceptability’ and explore the politics of what Kingdon (1995) calls the ‘process of alternative specification’. I focus on and reconceptualize value acceptability – defined as congruence around principles or qualities of collective action with intrinsic importance – as building discursive coalitions (Hajer 1993). Each solution is supported by a coalition of actors built around a relative convergence of preferences, values, and frames. Policy values are differentiated from political values (Stewart 2009, p 14). The latter underpin the design of governments and change slowly, if any, for example freedom or equality, while the former permeate specific governance measures and may change frequently, such as zero-tolerance policy as a form of being tough on crime. Frames are highlighted selections of aspects of perceived experience to create meaning and structure social reality (Entman 1993). Hence, the crafting of solutions not only creates meaning ‘in action’ but also brings together disparate actors in a single ‘package’ replete with interpretations of the past, expediencies of the present, and estimates of the future. I examine how that process works and argue that four factors make solutions likely contenders for serious consideration and final adoption: side payments, institutional rule manipulation, short time horizons, and advocacy/ framing. Political coalitions are forged around each solution by policy entrepreneurs, who mainly (but not exclusively) take part in the process through argumentation, partly the result of political conflict and partly the consequence of discursive meaning contestation.

The argument informs MSA by adding a dynamic element to the process of generating policy solutions (ideas or alternatives; I use the terms interchangeably), but it also goes beyond it by adding elements of pragmatic constructivism. It stresses the importance of agency and context in policy formulation. Policy actors deliberate over ideas to craft solutions in particular contexts. Meaning and symbols are integral parts of the process, transmitted through language and argumentation (Fischer 2003). Solutions contain politically constructed packages of meaning, preferences, and consequences through shared but often ambiguous contemporaneous understandings of political assumptions.

In the 1960s and 1970s, controversies related to the policy process began to emerge, in particular as they pertained to the policy decision-making process. Criticizing both pluralist theory and behaviouralist approaches, Schattschneider (1960), later followed by Cobb and Elder (1971, p 896) and Bachrach and Baratz (1970, p 44), suggested that the pre-decision process is a ‘highly restricted’ arena of conflicts in which some demands can be ‘suffocated’ or reinterpreted through the ‘manipulation of bias’ to prevent their emergence in decision arenas. This strategy was used to reduce the capacity of particular demands to attract the attention of decision makers and others, including the media and the general public. The authors insisted on recognizing the importance of the unequal political configurations of actors in the arena. Building on this perspective, Rochefort and Cobb (1994) published The Politics of Problem Definition, which helped to establish a link between definitional activities focused on problems and their asymmetric positions in relation to political power.

While this political perspective on the struggles surrounding problem definitions has been largely shared in policy studies by most authors and integrated into textbooks and handbooks about the policy process since the 1970s, the question of ‘policy formulation’ – referring to the specification of alternatives – has been studied using different approaches, including competing methodological perspectives, with no general consensus emerging. In so far as problem definition occurs within arenas of visible conflict in which dominant actors try to suppress opposing views, the formulation of solutions takes place in relatively hidden spaces where groups of dominant actors seek to contribute to the stability (or change) of the policy-making process by choosing and imposing their preferred solutions (Heclo and Wildavsky 1974; Richardson and Jordan 1979). As Kingdon (1984) observed, the contested and conflictual dynamic of problem definition contrasts with the incrementalist mode of policy formulation.

Focusing on the stability of policy solution formulation, Kingdon's perspective plays an important role in explaining policy change resulting from external factors that can disturb a punctuated equilibrium (Baumgartner and Jones 1993). Political conflict often appears outside the policy formulation process. Why, then, does the policy formulation stage appear as apolitical and non-conflictual in numerous studies?