Leiden University Student Repository

Berg, Safiya van den (2021)

Explaining Policy Change: A Multiple Streams Analysis of the New Year's Eve Bonfires

Master thesis | Crisis and Security Management (MSc)

This research revolves around the decision-making process surrounding the New Year’s Eve bonfires in The Hague. After incidents during the New Year’s Eve 2018/2019 bonfires, the municipality of The Hague changed its policy. Even though earlier editions revealed the safety risks of the bonfires, the municipality waited until after the 2018/2019 edition to intervene. In order to explain the timing of the policy change, this research uses the Multiple Stream Model by Kingdon (2011). The analysis of the municipal decision-making process gives an insight into the causes that have led to the change in policy. The conditions surrounding the bonfires in 2013/2014 and 2018/2019 are compared in order to establish which factors play an important role in the occurrence of policy change. By applying Kingdon’s model to the two cases, conclusions are drawn on whether the model is able to explain the difference in outcome, namely no policy change and a policy change. This research argues that...Show moreThis research revolves around the decision-making process surrounding the New Year’s Eve bonfires in The Hague. After incidents during the New Year’s Eve 2018/2019 bonfires, the municipality of The Hague changed its policy. Even though earlier editions revealed the safety risks of the bonfires, the municipality waited until after the 2018/2019 edition to intervene. In order to explain the timing of the policy change, this research uses the Multiple Stream Model by Kingdon (2011). The analysis of the municipal decision-making process gives an insight into the causes that have led to the change in policy. The conditions surrounding the bonfires in 2013/2014 and 2018/2019 are compared in order to establish which factors play an important role in the occurrence of policy change. By applying Kingdon’s model to the two cases, conclusions are drawn on whether the model is able to explain the difference in outcome, namely no policy change and a policy change. This research argues that changes in the problem and political stream have led to the policy change regarding the New Year’s Eve bonfires in 2019. The events of New Year’s Eve 2018/2019 have helped to identify the bonfires as a problem in need of government intervention. The political context was just right. In the 2013/2014 case necessary conditions were absent, which explains why a policy change did not occur then. This study has shown that Kingdon’s Multiple Stream Model is able to explain the policy change regarding the 2018/2019 New Year’s Eve bonfires.Show less

New Year's Eve Bonfires

Policy Change

John Kingdon

Multiple Stream Model

Municipality of The Hague

Author

Berg, Safiya van den

Faculty

Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs

Supervisors

Matthys, J.

ECTS Credits

15

Language

en