European Policy Analysis
Zohlnhöfer 2015 ). The bricoleur selects policy ideas to which policymakers are ripe to ; otherwise , the policy solution would not pass the decision-making stage .
• The second one is more innovative and suggests that the bricoleur builds on the initiatives developed by the policy community . This is the criterion of increasing returns : the bricoleur avoids the costs of exiting initiatives and even capitalizes on projects already developed by the policy community . Therefore , the bricoleur is likely to use ideas in which the policy community has invested time and efforts .
Following these criteria , the bricoleur creates a bespoke policy solution from different ideas presenting advantages in terms of ripeness of the politics stream and / or in terms of increasing returns .
This paper proceeds as follows : after entering bricolage and how it can contribute to the enrichment of the MSA , I first draw on process tracing to present the context in each stream , up to the SARS crisis . The first stream is the policy stream . Different ideas navigate in the policy stream : how do they stand the criterion of increasing returns ? Evidence comes from the debate that animated the policy community by analyzing articles in different publications of practitioners . This paper then investigates the variations in the politics stream and analyze how the respective positions of the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament ( EP ) have shown appetite for different solutions , how the European Commission has evolved from opponent to promotor of the creation of the ECDC and how this has affected the recombination of ideas . In order to do so , official positions of the institutions have been identified from the Official Journal of the European Union and the archives of the different institutions . The problem stream is eventually analyzed in terms of perception , also drawing from archives and speeches . The second methodological step is to demonstrate the lack of fit of the figure of the policy entrepreneur in a part that reflects on the window of opportunity and agency and on how the European Commission ’ s framing of the SARS crisis led to coupling by bricolage . Eventually , building on the analysis of the three streams , this paper focuses on the policy formulation part of bricolage , as well as the decision-making process and delivers a review of the concept in conclusion .
The Relationship Between Bricolage and Change
Entering Bricolage
Bricolage is a concept that presents a mode of scientific thoughts . In his book The Savage Mind , first published in 1962 , Levi-Strauss ( 1988 , 12 ) introduced the bricoleur as one who “ addresses himself to a collection of oddments left over from human endeavours ”. While Levi-Strauss looked at the concept from an anthropological point of view , the concept of bricolage resonated in different disciplines of social science . In public policy , the concept captures epistemological strategies and rationalities , under the name of Epistemological Bricolage ( Freeman 2007 ). The concept is identified as a self-learning process , the act of piecing together knowledge , as one “ acquires
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