Putting Out Fires With Institutional Reforms: Experts as Policy Entrepreneurs in the Swedish Fire and Rescue Policy Sector, 1986–2021

Abstract

This article examines the fire and rescue services sector in Sweden in the period 1986–2021, and explains the timing of bureaucratic reforms using the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF). In this study, we insert institutions in MSF by employing a two-level analysis; we highlight the interactions among experts acting as policy entrepreneurs over time and during a large window of opportunity, and we show that in a programmatically complex policy during a large window of opportunity open for a long period of time, policymakers may become proactive and engage in commissioning.