Refining the Multiple Streams Framework’s Integration Concept: Renewable Energy Policy and Ecological Modernization in Germany and Japan in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

The article proposes one of the first quantitative operationalizations of the Multiple Streams Framework’s (MSF) concept of policy community integration, which determines the gestation process of policy ideas in the policy stream. It argues that operationalization by the Gini coefficient of nodal degree and by Freeman’s segregation score enables us to indicate better the type of a policy community (less integrated, or more integrated), and thus, to assume the trajectory of the gestation process. The findings suggest that Policy Network Analysis offers a more progressive operationalization of the integration concept and helps to compare policy communities.