ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes to advance the science of policy process among a global community of scholars. It provides an anthology of seven of the most established theories in the field of policy processes. The policy processes emerged as a field of study in the 1950s as part of an endeavor to develop a science that integrates research on politics and government around a policy orientation. The outcomes of policy processes are the short- or long-term consequences or impacts of public policy on a society. The book provides seven different theories of policy process research that meet, to various extents and ways, the criteria outlined above for their inclusion in the discussion. It discusses the Multiple Streams Framework, the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory, the Advocacy Coalition Framework and summarizes the Institutional Analysis and Development framework and its offspring, the Social-Ecological Systems framework.
