United States low-income housing policy from 1930 to 1995: Assessing the feasibility of the advocacy coalition framework to explain policy change and learning at the United States congressional level

The purpose of this dissertation is to determine if the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) is an appropriate framework for examining policy change and learning in the U.S. low-income housing policy venue at the Congressional level from 1930 to 1995. The major theoretical issue addressed is whether or not the ACF is close to serving as a theory of the policy process primarily based on its success in explaining policy change and learning in environmental and science policy venues, which are typically strong closely-knit subsystems in which the same policy actors participate over a long period of time. An argument is made that if the ACF is to serve as a theory of the policy process, it has to be applicable to the more typical policy venue in which policy actors go in and out of the policy process depending on the issue, coalitions are loose-knit as opposed to tight-knit, and policy issues rise and fall off of the public agenda. The U.S. low-income housing policy venue is examined as representative of a more typical policy venue.;Baumgartner and Jones' Policy Agendas hearings data set coupled with supplemental legislative hearings data is used to show that from 1930 to 1995 the U.S. low-income housing policy venue was comprised of a small core of long-term policy participants but the majority of policy participants were one-time participants that entered and exited the policy process depending on the issue. Historical housing and socio-economic data is used to show that the problem of housing the poor in the U.S. is relatively unstable and contradicts the ACF assumption that attributes of a policy problem are relatively stable. It is also shown that the core disputed beliefs of U.S. low-income housing policy have changed over the years and that different actors have advocated different secondary aspects of these beliefs over the years. Based on these empirical findings there is not strong evidence to support two ACF hypotheses regarding advocacy coalition stability and conditions for governmental program revisions based on coalition stability. There is strong evidence to support two ACF hypotheses regarding coalition consensus on policy issues and the impact of external subsystem events on the policy core attributes of governmental programs.