Multiple streams theory: Insight into the global compact on migration

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (GCM) was founded based on the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants to address the immigrants’ needs and hosting states’ responsibilities. This study aims to better understand how GCM became part of the global public policy agenda and was formulated through the interactions of three main streams to create “the window of opportunity.” This study reflects upon the knowledge of the policy process through leveraging the multiple streams theory (MST) and modifying it to reconcile the differences between the national and the global public policies. The synthetic review shows the convergence of the problem, regime, and policy streams to affect the global agenda on the basis of global partnership and the global community. It also recognizes the actors who participated in creating GCM and their influence on this process. The utilization of a modified version of MST apprehends the interactive drivers of the GCM issue to enter the global public policy agenda and the global agora of formation. This study provides a structural explanation of the GCM’s composition and illustrates that “focusing events” in a state require global cooperation to mitigate the turmoil and potential spillover effects of the crisis. Lastly, the review reveals the main phases in GCM development.


INTRODUCTION
The escalation of the civil war in Syria, political instability, and racism as well as growing radicalism have caused a massive influx of refugees and immigrants worldwide. The latest refugees and immigration wave have included Syrian refugees, Afghans, Iraqis, and Africans of various nationalities fleeing their home countries to neighbouring states, Europe, the United States, and Canada. According to the United Nations of Refugees Agency (UNHCR) statistics, around 320,000 refugees and migrants entered Europe since the start of 2015, in addition to migrants coming in 2013 and 2014. However, European countries have had very much varied responses to the refugee and immigrant crisis due to political and economic considerations. For instance, Germany adopted an open-border policy and received the vast majority of refugees and asylum seekers. Other European countries, such as Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, have closed their borders and opted out of Dublin regulations and European union asylum policies. As a result, the heads of states and governments intervened to address this global issue and adopt the New York declaration for refugees and migrants to set the principles and obligations under which to organize the immigration process and resolve the challenges of migration (United Nations [UN], 2016).
The global compact on migration (GCM; 2018) is "a non-legally binding, cooperative framework that builds on the commitments agreed upon by member states in the New York declaration to improve cooperation on international migration" (paras. 6 and 7). Its main objectives are to curtail the causes that force people to leave their countries, guarantee immigrants' human rights, provide legal opportunities for regular migration, reduce irregular migration such as smuggling and trafficking, and improve data collection about immigration to foster evidence-based decision-making processes (Aleinkoff & Martin, 2018). The adoption process of the global compact on migration went through four phases: consultation, stocktaking, intergovernmental negotiation, and endorsement (United Nations [UN], 2017). This paper addresses the knowledge about the policy process of formulating the global compact on migration, meaning that it "focuses on how and why of policymaking" (Smith & Larimer, 2009, p. 6). It apprises GCM as a global public policy entailing a collective solution to deal with the emerging global challenges. we intend to analyze the answers to the following questions: (a) how was GCM created? (b) who are the actors that influenced the development and deliberation stages? (c) where are decisions made? (d) how are these decisions influenced by the interests and beliefs of various actors, both formally within decision-making processes and outside the formal processes?
To address these questions, our inquiry follows the multiple streams theory (MST; Kingdon, 1984). MST incorporates three independent streams: the problem, policy, and politics streams. This analytical approach enabled us to comprehend the formulation process of GCM and provided a clearer understanding about and lessened the ambiguity of the configuration process. The significance of this argument is twofold. First, it bridges the gap in the refugees and migration studies regarding the development process for the global refugee policies. According to (Milner, 2014), most of the refugee literature focuses on the impacts of global refugee policies rather than on understanding the process and factors affecting the development and implementation of the global policies. Second, this article studies the newly issued global compact, the very first to deal with migration issues systematically, to better understand the constituents of global migration policies and facilitate future studies to evaluate the impacts of global policies on migrants and states.
The first section of this study discusses the MST and how the differences between global and national policy pose additional streams for policy formation and the previous literature on the global compact on migration. The second section describes the methodology of this study. The third section applies the MST to the GCM through analyzing and synthesizing the theory's components to the GCM's groundings and arrangements. The fourth section subsequently outlines the phases of the GCM's development process. The study concludes with some remarks on the theoretical implications of using MST at the global level and the evolution and politics of the GCM.

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE
In this section, we discuss the multiple streams theory and the differences between global and national policies that have yielded change in the components of multiple streams theory to address this difference. We also review related studies on the preparation of the global compact on migration (GCM).

Theoretical reflection: Multiple streams theory
MST was developed by Kingdon (1984) in his landmark agendas, alternatives, and public policies. This theory explains how issues reach the political agenda and how policy comes to pass. Kingdon (1984) described how issues acquire agenda status and the basis on which policy alternatives are developed, and the theory focuses on how ideas fit policy problems (as cited in Cairney & Joans, 2016).
MST was developed from the garbage can model, which describes the muddled reality of decisionmaking processes. Cohen, march, and Olsen (1972) postulated that a decision is an outcome of four major streams: the problem, solution, participants, and choice-opportunities streams. Kingdon (1984) uses the same metaphor to demonstrate how policymaking is shaped through the problem, policy-proposal, and politics streams, which converge at specific times in manners that open the window of opportunity for policy change to come about (Ackrill & Key, 2011). In essence, the problem stream contains issues that gain policymakers' attention; the politics stream expresses factors generating a conducive environment in which to influence the agenda; and the policy stream represents the proposed solutions and ideas to deal with the issue (Cairney & Joans, 2016). Policy entrepreneurs and policy advocates play pivotal roles in agenda setting and the policymaking process as policymakers who take advantage of opportunities to influence policy outcomes to maximize their self-interest (Kingdon, 1995). In reality, the convergence of these three streams is deliberate, and entails architecting of issues, symbolic politics, and salient tactics and emotions (Eising, 2013). In addition, Kingdon pointed to the role of focusing events as crucial events that push publics and elites to become aware of an issue's importance. It is tantamount to exogenous factors that open the window of opportunity.
Indeed, the multiple streams theory is a powerful tool to comprehend policy processes and analyze the policymaking process, particularly agenda setting (Knaggård, 2015;Winkel and Leipold, 2016). Knaggård (2015) argued that utilizing the multiple streams theory requires special attention to the dynamics of the problem stream to understand the role of problem brokers to frame the problem. Moreover, the multiple streams theory explains the agenda-setting process under ambiguous and complex conditions (Winkel and Leipold, 2016). The multiple streams theory has been applied to different contexts and perspectives. For instance, it has been utilized to understand health care policies, foreign policy, and transportation, energy, and environmental policies (Weber, 2014;Travis & Zahariadis, 2002;Brunner, 2008;Carter & Jacobs, 2014;storch & winkel, 2013). The multiple streams theory has been applied at the national and local levels to ensure better understanding of public policymaking with an emphasis on agenda setting (Sabtier, 2007).
However, debate exists between those who believe that MST is universal and that its components are valid to apply in any state and at any time and it to be of value when addressing universal issue (Cairney & Jones, 2016) and others who consider MST to have a universality issue, as Kingdon examined health policies and transportation policies in the united states during the postwar period. In essence, Ackrill and Key (2011) employed MST to understand European union policymaking and asserted that it is essential to decontextualize the theory in order to adjust for the variations between American and European union legislation. The increasing number of studies employing the MST demonstrate its universality (e.g., Howlett, Mcconnell, & Perl, 2014;Jones et al., 2016;Sanjurjo, 2020).
In our analysis, the challenge was to apply Kingdon's theory to global public policy, which led us to analyze the characteristics of global public policy to find a common platform on which to organize the trajectory of the analysis. We ended up with the problem, regime, and policy streams, in addition to the active roles of partnerships and the world community.

Global public policy
Scholars, leaders, and policymakers have asserted that there has been an impulsive increase in global issues such as transboundary issues, conflict on interstate commons, and internal problems whose spillover affects other states (Soroos, 1990). These issues require global coordination for intervention and to correct. To this end, multiple forms of public policy transcends state scope, such as international public policy, transnational public policy, and global public policy. In this paper, we built our argument based on Coleman's (2012) taxonomy for public policies beyond the nation-state according to key actors and activity scale. According to Coleman (2012), global public policy refers to policies that cover the worldwide polity. By this term, policymaking occurs at a global scale instead of a regional or national scale, and the main actors are states, nongovernmental organizations, corporations, social movements, and individuals (Coleman, 2012). As such, the development of global policy objectives requires active participation by all actors.
The official participants are grouped into three main actors: internationalized public-sector officials, international civil servants, and transnational policy professionals. The internationalized public sector officials consist of state officials who directly formulate policy through their legitimate power (Slaughter, 2004). They comprise the ministerial level and lower-level regulators, such as judges, legislators, and regulators who have international perspectives (Stone, 2008). International civil servants are employees of international organizations who have the power to run their institution's operations (Stone, 2008). Transnational policy professionals are nongovernmental participants who join the official policymakers and have influence on the process, including community consultants, think tanks, private-sector leaders, experts, and nongovernmental organizations (Stone, 2008). These three groups interact and network based on their power and capacities to influence the global policymaking process (Stone, 2008). This interaction entails coalitions, partnerships, and shared opportunities and responsibilities. Stone (2008) pointed to the role of transnational advocacy coalitions, which incorporate nongovernmental organizations and activists based on shared values, principles, and information and are aimed at constructing the climate of public debate and civic engagement to influence the agenda-setting process. This interaction and co-optation occur in the "global agora," wherein the social and political plot is engendered by globalization and open communication and not bounded by a specific region or state (Stone, 2008, p. 20).
Partnerships and participants from the world community have significant roles in the formation of global public policy. In fact, the world community underlines the relationships between states and demonstrates the social and political norms that synchronize the bonds (Cronin, 2003). According to Cronin (2003), the world community entails leaders' visions and beliefs about security, justice, and order in ways that accomplish benefits. Cronin (2003) expressed a similar view concerning international protection regimes, which are components of the institutions established to promote the "common good for a collectivity of states" (p. 16). This shows that partnerships have a significant influence on global public policy formation. As such, our analysis verifies that partnerships rule agenda setting and policy formation, in lieu of entrepreneurship effects, in national agenda setting and public-policy formation in Kingdon's theory.
The rise of transnational issues, global civil society, the dissemination of global policies, and transnational networks are essential maneuvers of public policy (Brinkerhoff, 2002;Stone, 2008). In so doing, the partnership approach is a commonly evoked to analyze specific global issues and the agenda and formation of global public policies. In essence, the term partnership is applied to collaborative relations that amplify mutual benefits based on shared goals, principles, and understandings (Brinkerhoff, 2002). Partnerships are a combination of formal and informal institutions, organizations, structures and processes that encompasses self-interest and values to create self-reinforcing relationships underlined by inclusion, involvement, and mutual respect (Brinkerhoff, 2002). Bauman and Miller (2012) proclaimed that the partnership approach provides an idiosyncratic perspective with which to understand global public policy, especially in terms of a policy's key participants and the norms that govern the formation process.
The contextualization of MST has yielded the politics stream being replaced with the regime stream to make it more suitable for global public policy. The concept of regime facilitates understanding of the role of international relationships in developing global public policy. According to Bauman and Miller (2012), analyzing global policy by regime provides better conceptualization for global refugee policy.
For these reasons, we consider the influence of the regime approach to have a stronger impact on global public policy than the political streams and national mood 1 in national-level public policy. In essence, the regime represents "the institutional environment within which international policies are made" (Soroos, 1986, p. 21). The regime approach explains the cooperation processes among states to reduce anarchy and deal with issues that require collective action to solve (Bradford, 2007). It addresses the complexity of state interactions with other institutions that together shape international relations (Hopkins & Meiches, 2012). In more general terms, states are principal actors in world politics and attempt to maximize their national self-interests by contributing to the development of global public policy (Bradford, 2007). It is worth mentioning that states' interests do not contradict with other states' interests and that global public policy is formulated based on common interests and win-win situations with benefits for all parties through cooperation and policies being adjusted in ways that satisfy both parties (Bradford, 2007). As a matter of fact and as Stone (2008) suggested, the nature of global public policy is as "a multicentric, transformative, complex global political system with multiple issues, regimes govern challenges beyond any single state's control" (as cited in Bauman and Miller, 2012, p. 9), which demonstrates the potential role of regime in analyzing and addressing how the GCM was passed.

Related studies
The GCM is relatively new issued, so examining its impact or evaluating its consequences on migrants is inappropriate at this time. Therefore, most researchers have focused on the legal sides of the compact, and others have discussed its human rights approach and what is new in this document. Some researchers, such as , examined the EU's role in the composition of the GCM, the political developments that followed the New York declaration, and the significance of the role of the International Organization of Migration (IOM) as a UN-related organization. They also reviewed the UN's existing migration norms and the human rights that ought to be included in the compact, and they argued that the IOM was a key player in the negotiation stage of the GCM and its role as a facilitator was not a deterrence for framing the migration issues . Moreover, Kälin (2018) addressed the compact's inclusiveness feature and asserted that the GCM covers all of the root causes of people's mobility, such as evacuation, voluntary and planned migration, and displacement. The researcher claimed that the regional consultations to prepare the compact were at the heart of its development and that execution of the GCM as a legally nonbinding document depends on the follow-up procedures (Kälin, 2018). Crépeau (2018) clarified that the purpose of the compact was to facilitate people's mobility, put it in a legal framework, and regulate their movement in a way that ensures their safety and dignity. The researcher maintained that some states with strong and prosperous economies have the capacity to receive millions of migrants, but a problem lies in the governing regime's moral and political leadership (Crepeau, 2018). Frelin (2019) investigated the main discourses and interests of the institutions and countries that participated in the compact's development to understand the power and politics embedded in the GCM. Frelin (2019) employed the institutional theory and productive power to frame a new understanding of political conflicts' effects on migration. She found that in spite of the domination of political conflicts regarding migration, the actors' depoliticizing the discourse management is a step toward ensuing cooperation between states. Moreover, the researcher noted that providing power to the IOM as a part of the UN responsible for migration issues contributed to activating its role in coordinating the process. Frelin (2019) assumed that linking the GCM's development with irregular migration encouraged the adoption of its principles, which would make less developed countries asked for cooperation from the developed countries that were known as destinies for migrants because these states already had a stake in organizing the migrants' flow. Oelgemöller, and Allinson (2020) discussed the responsibility language in the Global Compact on Migration and the role of the international community in defining migration from a jurisprudential perspective. She argued that the responsibility concept in the compact has changed approaches of migration, and there has been a conceptual shift from a migrant to a responsible migrant who will actively participate in development. Carrera, Lannoo, Stefan, and Vosyliutė (2018) studied the scope and the significance of the GCM to EU states and concluded that the compact does not create new legal obligations for migrants; however, the EU states have to adopt it to maintain its inclusive sovereignty, including the migration issue as a dominant issue in its context. Their adoption of this compact is essential to ensure the human rights for their citizens when they travel around the world. Moreover, Carrera et al. pointed out that the EU states have a clear obligation to protect migrants under EU law. Generally speaking, effective implementation of the GCM is inherited in the rule of law and human rights, especially when the GCM is coupled with the Global Compact of Refugees to ensure a resilience-based approach to managing a humanitarian crisis.
With a special eye on the legal nature of the Global Compact on Migration and negotiation process, Melin (2019) stated that the Global Compact on Migration negotiation and adoption agreement 218 TFEU among EU members are not applied because the GCM is as a non-legally binding international tool. In this context, there lacks a legal framework on negotiation of international soft law, and indeed, there is uncertainty in framing the negotiation and adoption  described the goals of the GCM and defined the cooperation framework as ensuring international commitments to all aspects of humanitarian displacement. In addition, they outlined 23 elements of the GCM and its adoption process and the main actors who participated in its preparation and adoption process. Bufalini (2019) assessed the legal considerations of the GCM and found that its content is a repeat of human rights and does not assign legal obligations to the states. Further, Bufalini offered some cautions in terms of the limited scope of the GCM's application and the fact that the softness of its review mechanisms cannot regulate the states' future practices. Legally speaking, the normative content is an absolute customary law and cannot bring about a real change in the migration situation, and the corpus of the compact is loosely worded and imprecise. A number of states opposed the approval of the GCM, even though it is a non-binding legal instrument.
Ultimately, as the Global Compact on Migration is a newly formulated compact, some researchers have focused on the significance of data in addressing and informing the global policy, such as Kraly and Hovy (2020), who emphasized the role of data and evidence-based analysis to ensure effective international migration governance. They stated that the most sufficient way to implement the Global Compact on Migration is by incorporating the implications of scientific initiatives and relying on data to overcome the challenges of applying the compact's principles.

METHODOLOGY
This study employed synthesis analysis to understand the policy process of the Global Compact of Migration. Jackson (1980) pointed out that research synthesis enables researchers to consider new developments in a field, to integrate knowledge from various scholarly works, and to conclude generalizations about substantive issues from studies and related literature. In essence, the review of articles is a research method that aims to synthesize the related literature without collecting and analyzing primary data (Green, Johnson, & Adams, 2006). In this study, we utilized the review of literature and official documents and applied multiple streams theory (MST) to organize and coalesce the elements of the review.
The synthetic review comprised the following steps: • The first step: formulating the research questions (how, who, and where) to identify the scope of the research and to frame the analysis. Jesson, Matheson, and Lacey (2011) asserted that research questions are essential to guide the whole review methodology and the selection of all relevant studies. • The second step: searching for all relevant literature and studies by employing extensive coverage to ensure that all relevant literature is included (Paré et al., 2015). Searching the existing literature led to adding official documents to obtain inclusive knowledge. • The third step: screening and evaluating the literature's relevancy and appropriateness in answering the research questions in light of predetermined rules. In fact, the inclusion criteria encompassed peer-reviewed articles, the Global Compact of Migration itself, and United Nations General Assembly documents, IOM reports, and European Union reports. • The fourth step: analyzing and synthesizing the extracted data from the included studies and reports.
According to Jessen et al. (2011), the data obtained from literature must be presented in a meaningful way to make a difference in adding knowledge. Moreover, Webster and Watson (2002) claimed that a literature review goes beyond listing of previous scholarly works but involves organizing and integrating them in a specific typology or framework. Therefore, in this study, we used the MST to organize the extracted data in a way that addressed the process and factors that contributed to the formulation of the Global Compact of Migration. The use of MST is based on scientific consideration (as described in the Literature Review and Theoretical Reflection section).

Problem Stream
Immigration is considered one of the major issues of the current era. The total number of international migrants is 257,700,000, or approximately 3.4% of the total population (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2017). The latest unprecedented mass influx of refugees and immigrants in Europe and Middle East from 2012 reached its peak at 2015 and continued into 2016 and 2017. It has gained the global attention of knowledgeable observers and policymakers, who have asserted that this issue will create a great challenge for receiving states, host communities, and the refugees and asylum seekers themselves if it is not regulated and coordinated effectively (Apap, 2019). In essence, these challenges entail reception capacity and pressure on public services and infrastructure, providing humanitarian support to asylum seekers and immigrants, dealing with political and social ramifications, and demographic imbalance.
Speaking of focusing events, the repercussions of the Syrian Civil War and the 2015 refugee crisis caused more than 5,600,000 people to flee their home countries to neighboring states and Europe. For example, more than a million migrants from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan entered the European Union states (Kakissis, 2018). As described by the UNHCR High Commissioner Filippo Grandi (2019), the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis was "the biggest humanitarian and refugee crisis of our time, a continuing cause for suffering". The record-breaking number of Syrian refugees in Europe has been accompanied by other alarming indicators that have captured the attention of world community policymakers. To illustrate, European countries such as Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia closed their borders and opted out of the Dublin Regulations and European Union asylum policies; this increased the burden on other European countries, which later called for shared responsibility in managing the immigrant crisis (Kakissis, 2018).
Moreover, refugees and migrants are exposed to smuggling and trafficking threats, which are considered human rights violations and dangerous criminal acts (Mandic, 2017). The European Union paid Turkey around $3,000,000,000 to accept refugees and to enhance the latter's coastal patrols to prevent smugglers from entering Europe (Moore, 2016). According to the international and European cross-border crime agencies Interpol and Europol, 90% of refugees who entered European Union countries did so facilitated by smugglers, who made roughly $6,000,000,000 from the 1,000,000 refugees who entered Europe in 2015 alone (as cited in Moore, 2016). The dominance of smuggling and trafficking has been caused by a lack of financial support and the poor response policies of receiving and neighboring states, which make the refugees look for better opportunities and living conditions than those provided in receiving states in the Middle East, such as in Jordan and Lebanon (Wong, 2018).
The recognition of refugees' and immigrants' challenges and their journeys to look for better conditions is critical for developing effective policies. Addressing the problem's indicators demonstrates that the current immigration crisis is pressing, so the global community must respond to this crisis in a way that encompasses all dimensions of the issue, including providing protection and humanitarian support to refugees and immigrants, sharing the responsibility with receiving states and host communities, preserving human rights, and dealing with the roots that are causing this human mobility.

Regime Stream
The GCM was developed through a complex, overlapping regime. Analyzing how international administrations contributed to managing the refugee and immigration crisis is similar to assembling the pieces of jigsaw puzzle to produce a complete picture. In doing so, we studied the refugee and immigration regimes and the main participants in the GCM's formation.
The regime stream comprises the collective security regime, which includes United Nations norms and principles for humanitarian protection, human rights conventions, and international migration organizations and policies. In essence, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) consulted with the United Nations to improve global migration governance and to utilize the UN system to build upon the GCM's principles (Apap, 2019). The European Union states were prominent actors in preparing the GCM. The preparation process encompassed human rights laws and advocated for the principles of nonregression and nondiscrimination (GCM, 2018, para. 17). The European Union's dialogue platform was based on its relationship with non-European states in dealing with immigration issues. For example, the European Union adopted global frameworks to manage the immigration crisis through partnerships with the sending states, specifically the Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM) in 2005 and 2011 and the International Convention of 18 December 1990 on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (ICRMW). On the other hand, the developing countries, which are usually considering sending states or receiving states from their neighbors, such as states in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa, expressed their responsibility in managing the immigrant crisis and pointed to three important dimensions: the necessity of distinguishing between refugees and migrants, the economic cost of receiving migrants and refugees, and the drivers of irregular migration (United Nations, 2018).
The wholeness participatory approach to the GCM expanded the migration regime to include not only the International Organization for Migration, United Nations, and heads of member states and governments but also other nonofficial participants such as civil society organizations, the private sector, and global migration groups in the consultation phase (GCM, 2018).

Policy Stream
In looking for a scheme to address immigration problems by preventing irregular and involuntary migration, global policy is developed by generating a comprehensive solution with which to tackle the root causes of migration and improve the structural conditions that forced people to leave their home countries (UNHCR, 2017). From a policy outlook, several approaches exist with which to deal with global migration issue. Since the GCM is not legally binding, member states have no domestic or international obligations, the GCM has no direct financial costs, and the GCM is endorsed by two-thirds majority vote (European Commission, 2018), the preparation and consensus processes were developed through capacity building of national and subnational migration authorities, mutual understanding, and shared responsibility. To this end, the primordial policy soup of member states, related international organizations, and stakeholders raise cross-cutting issues regarding human rights, international cooperation, national sovereignty and rule of law, gender, children issues, and sustainable development (GCM, 2018). All of these issues are built upon multidimensional evidence-based discussions to propose a coherent, comprehensive, and consensual migration-response framework. For instance, the proposed GCM entails addressing migrants' human rights; protecting migrants workers' rights; enhancing social-inclusion policies; eliminating discrimination, racism, and xenophobia; encouraging women's empowerment; respecting their rights during all migration phases; and considering their sensitive issues and needs (GCM, 2018b).
In addition, the compact discusses two important principles in managing the migration process. First, the migration-management process is a whole-government approach that consists of the coordination and collaboration of vertical and horizontal intergovernmental and intersectoral relationships. Second, this compact applies good governance principles to promote stakeholder participation in the policymaking process and state management. The whole-society approach of the GCM supports the participation of "migrants, diaspora, local communities, civil society, academia, the private sector, parliamentarians, trade unions, the national human rights institutions, the media and other relevant stakeholders in migration governance" (GCM, 22018, p. 5).
As a result of the pressing realities of migration issues, especially after the 2015 migration crisis, and the need for a worldwide framework with which to respond to this global problem, and after multidimensional discussion, debate, and compromises, the GCM was endorsed in the form of a UN resolution. The following analysis on the GCM's preparation demonstrates the major stages of the development process and how the General Assembly of the United Nations took organized, allencompassing activities to reach the final version of this global migration policy.

Figure 1. GCM Multiple Streams Theory
Source: By the authors

Explaining the policy process
The GCM was developed as a global policy through several phases, to formulate and structure the course of action needed to deal with migrants' problems and all their facets. The GCM's creation process was a high-level decision to address refugees' and migrants' needs and complications that encompassed multiple themes, issues, and stakeholders. Its inclusive approach was demonstrated throughout the development process, which involved informal, interactive multi stakeholder hearings and six informal thematic sessions (New York Declaration, Annex I, 2016). The following view provides a conceptual guide to better understand the GCM's development process. Figure 2 portrays the main phases and the timeline of each phase.
The consultation phase. The first phase of the preparation process was aimed at collecting substantive data and evidence-based contributions, in the form of three subphases, to ensure the maximum exchange of data and recommendations. It involves six thematic sessions on different issues such as human rights and social inclusion, the roots of displacement, international cooperation, opportunities for migrations and sustainable development, and regular labor movement (UNHCR, 2017B).
Regional consultation encompassed five United Nations regional commissions, namely the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the Economic Commission for Western Asia, the Economic Commission for Africa, the Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific, and the Economic Commission for Europe, in addition to sub regional commissions, to address migration issues and challenges in each region parallel with national processes and initiatives, civil society participation, and the International Organization for Migration (UNHCR, 2017B).
The United Nations held multi-stakeholders hearings to collect data and facts about the drivers of migration within regions, the challenges, and the expected contributions of the global policy under consideration to deal with the worldwide migration crisis (GCM, 2017). The stakeholders involved in the meetings and consultation process were considered as unofficial participants of the compact's preparation and included civil society, think tanks, academic institutions, private-sector organizations, and diaspora and migration communities (A/RES/71/280, 2017). This wide range of stakeholder involvement ensured that a reliable proposal was developed that was closely related to their problems and the realities of migration.
The stocktaking phase. The stocktaking phase involved assessing and reviewing the received data, opinions, and consultation results to frame the compact's vision upon the recommendations of the secretary-general. In essence, it serves as a platform for different states and stakeholders to congregate and to outline the compact's principles, objectives, and outcomes. The stocktaking process occurred at two levels. The first was an intensive preparatory meeting in Mexico to provide the insights and recommendations for the compact's adoption and to study participants' suggestions and actionable commitments and the implementation mechanisms (GCM, 2017). Then, five regional meetings occurred in Chile, Lebanon, Ethiopia, Thailand, and Switzerland, during which discussions and consultations with stakeholders and civil society organizations took place to configure the GCM's basic themes and the main issues that required global governance action to correct, before moving to the next phase (GCM, 2017).
The intergovernmental negotiation phase. The intergovernmental negotiation phase represents the intergovernmental compromises and discussions that decided the GCM. These negotiations occurred in six rounds from February to July 2018. It included two zero drafts to discuss the compact's core concepts, objectives, and principles, based on common understanding, shared responsibilities, and human rights. These zero drafts were followed by three revised drafts from March to June 2018, in light of the international arbitrations and recommendations. Lastly, as the product of the intergovernmental debate, the compact's final draft was established as a framework of international cooperation to deal with the migration problems and challenges in a way that would facilitate regular and orderly migration and alleviate the causes of compulsory mobility for sustainable development and rule of law.
The manifestation and endorsement phase. The UN General Assembly endorsed the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration in a vote among the 152 member states. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Israel, Poland, and the United States voted against it (Risse, 2018). Algeria, Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Chile, Italy, Latvia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Romania, Singapore, and Switzerland abstained from voting, and 24 member-states did cast a ballot on the compact's adoption (Risse, 2018). The endorsement occurred in the presence of the heads of state and government and high representatives at the Intergovernmental Conference to Adopt the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration in Morocco held on December 10-11, 2018.

Figure 2. Phases of GCM
Source: by the authors

CONCLUSION
The 2015 migration crisis and the political and social turbulence in the Middle East and North Africa region required the international community to intervene to deal with the irregular migration, especially given the variations in the location of the migrants received by European Union states. The United Nations and the International Organization on Migration announced the need for international cooperation to manage the crisis by enhancing legal migration and mitigating the causes of illegal migration as well as to guarantee human rights and fight all forms of discrimination. The GCM was endorsed by a vote to accomplish these goals through shared responsibilities, common understanding, and capacity building.
This study focuses on the knowledge of the policy process of developing the GCM. Policy-process research places high emphasis on theory, with greater concentration on problem definition and explanatory analysis (Deleon & Weible, 2010). Indeed, the MST was used as an analytical approach with which to address global public agenda setting and policymaking. The argument herein was constructed based on Coleman's (2012) taxonomy for public policy to analyze the GCM as a global public policy. We began the analysis by distinguishing between global public policy and national policy, to reconcile their differences and to reflect the components of the MST.
The theoretical analysis demonstrates that decontextualizing the theory and changing its components are crucial for addressing global public policy. This yielded three major streams -the problem, regime, and policy streams -in addition to the influence of partnerships and the world community.
This study systematically highlights the GCM's creation process, the official and nonofficial participants in the process, and the compact's main thrusts by analyzing these three streams and the global agora. Researchers and practitioners are encouraged to take the next step to focus on policy analysis and knowledge in the policy process to stipulate the recommendations and implications of the first-ever migration compact.
The policy implications of this study indicate the fact that the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is legally nonbinding, concerns arise in terms of commitments to its principles and implementation, the global security regime has demonstrated its capacity to influence shaping global policy regarding human protection and capacity building. Clearly, partnerships among the world community have significant roles in the formation of global public policies. Moreover, the multi-stakeholder participation and hearings enhance the evidence-based compact's development. The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration demonstrates a reality-protection nexus at the global level. Finally, it is vital that in the future researchers and practitioners have to assess the implementation process and evaluate the barriers to implementation.