Policy formation, termination and the multiple streams framework: the case of introducing and abolishing automated university admission in France

Abstract

The Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) has developed into one of the major theoretical lenses to explain policy change. However, it has been mostly used to explain policy formation whereas studies on policy termination remain scarce. This article addresses this gap. It combines the MSF and the literature on policy termination to study both the formation and the termination of one and the same policy. We explain why an algorithm-based university admission system in France, Admission Post Bac (APB), was introduced in 2008 before being abolished ten years later. While we find that the problem stream and the political stream were ripe and facilitated policy change in both cases, a policy entrepreneur coupling a policy solution with the open window could only be found for the introduction of APB. Instead, the termination was mainly characterized by enormous problem pressure. Our results contribute to theoretical refinement of the MSF and to empirical studies on political dynamics in the understudied field of algorithmic governance.