The Advocacy Coalition Framework

This open access book provides an updated and integrated analysis of the Advocacy Coalition Framework, more than thirty years after its conception. First devised in the 1980s to help explain change within public policy processes, the framework has been widely applied, criticized and revised over the last three decades, implemented by policy scholars across the globe, and in hundreds of different languages. 

Edited by the two foremost ACF scholars, this book analyses the current state and future directions of the Advocacy Coalition Framework. The first section provides a concise overview of the purpose of the framework, as well as its application in previous research. This is followed by eleven cross-section case studies that showcase some of the most exciting developments in ACF scholarship around the globe. It concludes with recommendations for adapting the ACF for future use, as well as new directions of research.

Chapter 0: The Advocacy Coalition Framework Origins, Theories, and the Textbook Version.- Chapter 1: Changing Beliefs, Enduring Coalitions a Longitudinal Analysis of Policy Beliefs and Advocacy Coalition Structures.- Chapter 2: Where Advocacy Coalitions and Policy Networks Intersect in U.S. Environmental Risk Policy.- Chapter 3: Advocacy Coalitions ‘In Power’ and Major Policy Change in Canada A Fuzzy Set Investigation.- Chapter 4: Antecedents of Policy Change: Advancing the Advocacy Coalition Framework’s Theory and Methods.- Chapter 5: Coalition Opportunity Structures and Policy Change A Comparative Analysis of Nuclear Facility Siting Efforts in the United States.- Chapter 6: Learning and Uncertainty: Information Environments and Policy Oriented Learning.- Chapter 7: How Did We Miss This? Democracy and Policy Beliefs in the Advocacy Coalition Framework.- Chapter 8: Change in a Nested Subsystem How National Coalitions Use Resources to Influence State Policy Decisions.- Chapter 9: Analyzing Beliefs and Coordination in Nascent Policy Subsystems.- Chapter 10: Resource Allocation and Influence: An Advocacy Coalition Framework Analysis of the U.S. Violence Against Women Act.- Chapter 11: Evolution of the oil and gas policy subsystem in Ghana.- Chapter 12: Advocacy Coalition Framework Advancing Scholarship in the Textbook and Beyond.

Hank C. Jenkins-Smith is George Lynn Cross Research Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Oklahoma, USA. 

Christopher M. Weible is University of Colorado Distinguished Professor in the School of Public Affairs, University of Colorado Denver, USA, and Visiting Professor in the Department of Business Administration, Technology and Social Sciences, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden.