An Analysis Of The Advocacy Coalition Framework And Its Application

How are the public policies formulated and implemented? It is a fundamental question for public policy researchers to answer. Furthermore, in democratic conditions, policy subjects making or implementing policies are restricted by certain factors, driven by certain motivations, behave with certain manners and interact within certain relationship, while the question is what they are. It should be said that since the inception of the policy sciences, many public policy researchers have devoted themselves to answer such a fundamental question from practical or theoretical perspective. As a result, many policy process theories with broad impact are developed. However, because of the complexity and ambiguity of public policy process, traditional policy process theories Even if such methods as stages are so long and universal applied, has begun to be widely questioned and criticized with the change in practice and theory. In such a circumstance, new policy process theories begun to spring up in the 1980s. The advocacy coalition framework (ACF) developed by Sabatier and some other scholars has been widely applied and tested in many different countries, political systems and policy domains during the past thirty years, as one of the most influential and attractive new policy process theories. Since the last three years, some Chinese scholars have become interested in ACF and applied it to understand policy change in China's policy domains such as education. However, systematic studies to the theory itself are still in short, which constrained the progress and scale of its spread, application as well as test. This paper tries to make a systematic analysis and application of ACF, and then suggest some innovations and modifications according to the specificity of the Chinese policy process.The introduction part describes the research background, literature review, methods selection, and research framework design; the conclusion part summarizes the main conclusions, main contribution, follow-up research issues and proposals. In addition, each chapter is summarized as follows: Chapter I: Formation and Development of Advocacy Coalition FrameworkThe practical background of the ACF is to conform to the new features of the policy practice: political democracy becomes practical and the public participation becomes authentic; economic conditions with more complexity and policy objectives with more diversification; society becomes disintegrated and the heterogeneity of actors are enlarged; the function of culture and science is strengthen and knowledge shows deeper impact. Theoretical background lies in overstepping the main controversies of policy theory: the traditional argument in the study of policy about the priority of knowledge and politics; which is the most important policy determinants, environmental factors, political factors or other? Hypothesis of the policy actors, can we build a bridge between the rationality and irrationality; the study of policy implementation should be top-down or bottom-up? The evolution of the ACF can be divided into five stages: brewing formation, structured development, questioning and response, revising and widening, in-depth development.Chapter II: Basic Concepts and Logical System of Advocacy Coalition FrameworkThe advocacy coalition framework used some conceptions existing in policy sciences such as policy subsystem, political resource, political opportunity structure, policy learning and policy change, but with special assignment. ACF widened the denotation of policy subsystem, created some new conceptions such as advocacy coalition, policy belief system, coalition resources structure, coalition opportunity structure and policy-oriented learning. By widening and bundling the basic concepts, seven core points of the ACF can be outlined: the policy subsystem is structured with the advocacy coalition pattern; policy core beliefs are the root causes of the separation between different coalitions; the matching of coalition's resources and strategy restrict its actions and counterpart effects; policy beliefs construct the policy-oriented learning and constrain the attribution of policy change; policy brokers and professional forum play an important role in the policy stalemate; internal shocks in the policy subsystem may cause major policy changes; by the, external factors impact on policy subsystems through the opportunity structure, resource and constraints mechanism.Chapter III: Test and Accessment Abroad about Advocacy Coalition FrameworkBy overview of the ACF's application, examination and assessment in different countries, different political backgrounds and different policy areas over the past two decades, we can find that, Its applicable field is extensive, including natural resources, environmental, economic, social and other key areas of public policy, with cultural and political policies areas waiting for more applications. It can be applied to almost any country or region with different economic development and political system, but in order to be fully applied, even in European countries which are similar to the United States it should be modified according to their specificity. The themes of the ACF including the assumption about the role of science in public policy, the stability of advocacy coalitions, the number of coalitions in the policy subsystem, coordinated collective action, the relationship between policy-oriented learning and policy change, and the interface mechanism between external variables and policy subsystem, were all confirmed in case studies, thus proved the overall logic of the ACF, however, they were still ambiguous in different extent which should be further clarified. Consistency can be found between ACF and some other policy process theories including the stages model, thus, in certain conditions it can be used in conjunction with other theories which is helpful go have a more comprehensive understanding of complexity of the policy process. Overall, the logic of the advocacy coalition framework is correct, and its applicability and the explanatory power in different countries are obvious, but there are still some limitations needed to be overcome in the future.Chapter IV: ACF Applicated to Analyze China's Health Policy ChangeChina's new reform of health system returned to more governmental responsibility, policy change happened in this area. Using ACF to analyze such a complex process, we can find that, a series of causality revealed by ACF are hidden behind the phenomenon: there are two advocacy coalitions in China's health policy subsystem, one is the government-led coalition and the other is market-led coalition; differences in policy core beliefs such as the basic causes of the problem, proper distribution of authority between government and market, priority accorded various policy instruments are the root of the two coalition'confrontation; each coalition has its specific resources structure, which can be used strategically to achieve their goals and impact the action effect; policy-oriented learning, external events, negotiated agreement and internal shocks are the four ways that cause policy change.Chapter V: Access the Explanatory Power of ACF when Applicated to China's Policy ProcessBy looking for the corresponding real evidence of the Advocacy coalition framework's basic concepts, accessing the consistency of the causality it provided and reflecting on the adequacy when using it to explain health policy changes in China, we can find that, its five premises are not only scientific but also necessary for explanation of the Chinese health policy change process. Its key points reflect critical events in China health policy change process, the logical reasoning provides consistent interpretation of the policy change process. Generally speaking, when ACF is used to understand policy change in China, its explanatory power is obvious due to its contents and methods. However, the explanation it provided is not adequate enough. There are still some questions, including the relationship between beliefs and interests, the scope of coalition member, the role of governmental authorities and its decision-making process, special reasons for policy change, the role of policy broker and its mechanism, the elements of coalition opportunity structures, the correlation between the four ways of policy change.Chapterâ…¥: Expansion and Modification to ACF for China's Policy ProcessThree expansions can be made up for the inadequacy, including the blending of the beliefs logic and the interests logic and its mechanism, the role of policy brokers and the mechanism and conditions, the correlation and integration of four ways of policy change. In accordance with the three major sections - the external parameters, policy subsystem, the mechanism that external parameters acting on the policy subsystem - the particularity of China's public policy process can be described, which provides the basis of amendments to ACF. First, In the condition of economic restructuring and social transition, policy change (often significant one) are caused by the following three abnormal ways: changes of deep-core beliefs lead to significant policy changes, policy-oriented learning can lead to major policy changes, new understanding of the basic attributes of the policy subsystem (policy areas) leads to significant policy changes; Second, as "democratic centralism" as the basic decision-making rule in China, government authorities can not be ignored when analyzing the decision-making process, the policy belief system of the authoritative decision-makers should be recognized, inspection policy-oriented learning activities occurred on the authoritative decision-makers level should be studied, their policy broker's role should be considered; Third, the concept of policy regime may integrate three crucial aspects of China's policy process including public policy power structure, public policy function deployment, public policy operational mechanism, which steps over internal and external factors of the policy subsystem and acts as the intermediary mechanism. Based on these expansions and modifications, this paper recommends a new advocacy coalition framework diagram for analyzing China's policy process.