Description
Recent dialogue between foreign policy analysis and works on the multiple streams framework has increasingly focused attention on the significance of policy entrepreneurs in agenda setting and decision-making to explain foreign policy change. This paper aims to contribute to this dialogue by stressing that whether policy entrepreneurs are successful in coupling ideas from the policy community with the foreign policy making process to move beyond perceived ineffective policy will depend on the availability and size of a policy window, a concept that has remained seriously under-analysed and under-specified in most works applying insights from public policy works on the policy process to foreign policy analysis. The paper suggests that in relation to bilateral foreign policy as made by US administrations the size of the policy window has recently been conditioned by five factors: the investment of administration officials in the existing policy, perceived geopolitical pressures, the prevailing grand strategy, the level of intra-administration contention, and the access policy entrepreneurs have to policy makers. I illustrate my argument with reference to US Burma policy, a case associated with a long history of different kinds of policy entrepreneurs being quite successful in moving US policy when the latter has been judged to be ineffective. Specifically, I focus on the Biden administration’s reluctance to: a) fully implement the 2022 BURMA Act and b) provide more than limited support to the parallel National Unity Government that has sought to remove the Burmese military from Myanmar’s national politics.
