Policy Process Of The United States Clean Electricity Standard From The Perspective Of The Advocacy Coalition Framework

The international community is now in the critical period for the implementation of the Paris Agreement,yet countries are slow in reducing emissions.In the United States,for example,the power sector is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases.Reducing carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants is critical to achieving the U.S.goal of Nationally Determined Contribution(NDC).However,since Obama’s presidency,a national-level clean electricity standard has been stuck in a decade-long policy deadlock,as evidenced by a lack of support in Congress,multiple legal battles in the Supreme Court,a stay of implementation requested by the Supreme Court,withdrawal by Trump,reintroduction and then abandonment by the Biden administration.All the setbacks have made it very difficult to decarbonize the power sector.In this context,this paper aims to explore the policy process of the decade-long policy deadlock of the U.S.clean electricity standard and to analyze the reasons why the policy change was not achieved.Based on the theoretical perspective of the Advocacy Coalition Framework and the research methods of literature analysis and case analysis,this paper first summarizes the policy process of the clean power standard in the United States during the three presidential terms and its two major coalitions,and then analyzes the belief system of the two coalitions and how they contribute to the policy deadlock.Finally,the conditions of policy change are analyzed.This paper finds that there are two major coalitions in the policy subsystem of the national clean electricity standard.One is the Pro Clean Electricity Standard Coalition composed of members of the majority of the Democratic Party and its supporters,liberals,environmental organizations,and clean energy companies.The opposing coalition is the Anti Clean Electricity Standard Coalition composed of members of the majority of the Republican Party and its supporters,conservatives,and the fossil fuel industry,etc.The core belief system of the Pro-Coalition mainly includes fairness and justice,relatively balanced self-ranking,and government intervention,and the Anti-Coalition’s core belief system mainly includes security and independence,self-prioritized ranking,and minimum government intervention.The divergence in belief systems led to the two coalitions’ distinct core policies,with the Pro-Coalition arguing that the government should force power plants to produce a certain percentage of clean electricity,and the Anti-Coalition arguing that states have the right to determine what energy sources are used in power plants.Driven by their beliefs,the two coalitions compete for the five key coalition resources,namely legal authority,public opinion,information,private power,and financial resources,with which beliefs were translated into policy outcomes.Among all five types of resources,the Pro-Coalition has the advantage in public opinion and social movement,and the Anti-coalition has the advantage in both legal authority and financial resources.After the policy deadlock is formed,only strong external shocks and policy learning between coalitions can lead to policy changes.In the analysis of path one,this paper finds that U.S.society has experienced a certain degree of external shocks in the past decade.The biggest shock is the change in socioeconomic conditions,which is the shift in market preference from coal to natural gas and renewable energy.However,shock of public opinion,shock of natural disasters,and shock of policy outputs from other subsystems are deeply influenced by the political polarization in the U.S.and fail to bring significant positive change to the policy process.In the analysis of path two,this paper finds that the highly conflicting belief systems are not conducive to policy learning between coalitions.In addition,professional forums do not effectively play a role in moderating conflict mitigation in a decentralized political system like the United States.In conclusion,the high degree of conflicting beliefs and the balance of power in the U.S.clean electricity standard policy process have created a policy deadlock,and the two major paths that could drive change,external shocks and policy learning,have failed to materialize,thus preventing a policy change.Up to now,the Advocacy Coalition Framework is mostly used to analyze successful policy changes,but less often used to analyze policy deadlock,and most studies on the U.S.Clean Electricity Standard focus only on the policy process during a single presidential term.This study helps to verify the explanatory power of the advocacy coalition framework for policy deadlock,and it provides a more dimensional policy analysis of the failure of the clean electricity standard.