Abstract
The recent version of the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF - Herweg et al. 2017) introduces new concepts and hypothesis to advance MSF explanation of ambiguity in the policy process. This paper aims to test the applicability of some new concepts, such as political entrepreneurs, decision agenda, and decision window, in different settings of Central and Eastern Europe.
It focuses on the case of adoption of the Law no 302/2016 Coll., the first major policy change in the regulation of Czech political parties since 2004, and response to changed framing of political parties after 2010. Based on the qualitative analysis of parliamentary documents, it explores the adoption of the bill in the parliamentary arena with a particular focus on the strategies of political entrepreneurs during the hearings in the Czech Parliament.
The findings seem to confirm the importance of the institutional setting for the decision agenda and window. They also show that political entrepreneurs use a wide range of strategies which can be divided into procedural and argumentative ones and which broadly corresponds to the MSF propositions.
Another interesting finding is that particular content of argumentation concerns the selection criteria known from the softening up of ideas such as technical feasibility etc. Thus, the paper should help us better understand ambiguity in the regulation of political parties under the current wave of populism as well as contribute to more robust MSF.