Advocacy Coalition Research Articles

Immigrant regularisation politics during COVID-19: advocacy coalitions and governments’ incentives in Italy and Spain

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic brought the issue of immigrant irregularity to the public fore, exposing undocumented migrants’ vulnerabilities and the reliance of supply chains on their ‘essential work’. While pro-regularisation instances emerged in several countries, governments responded differently to them. Delving into the political determinants of immigrant regularisation programmes, the article compares the cases of Italy and Spain, traditionally considered as ‘hallmarks’ of the ‘Southern European immigration model’. The findings suggest that the types of actors that mobilised and the arguments they invoked, and governments’ opportunities and constraints in the national and supranational arena were central to explain why Italy approved a collective regularisation and Spain did not.

Fracking Twitter: Utilizing machine learning and natural language processing tools for identifying coalition and causal narratives

AbstractThe Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) has provided policy scholars with a valuable method to gain empirical insight into the power of narratives in the policy process. However, a significant limitation of the NPF has been its ability to deploy this framework on large N datasets due to the labor‐intensive nature of collecting narrative data. In recent years, NPF scholars have turned to computational social science tools to address this challenge. This study builds upon this emerging body of literature and our previous work, which uses sentiment analysis, a natural language processing technique, to evaluate the use of the angel/devil shift across coalitions before and after a major policy change. We examined Tweets that included the terms “fracking” and “New York” before and after the introduction of a moratorium. While sentiment analysis allowed us to gain insight into the narrative structure of the fracking policy discourse space, the labor involved in hand‐coding Twitter users into neutral‐, pro‐, or anti‐fracking groups was onerous. This project aims to supplement our natural language processing method by employing supervised machine learning techniques to increase the universe of respondents. We hand‐coded 500 Twitter users into neutral‐, pro‐, or anti‐fracking groups and trained a much larger dataset using an extreme gradient boost algorithm to classify a broader corpus of Tweets. This enabled us to expand the number of Tweets used in the analyses. We then applied sentiment analysis on this newly classified larger dataset to reveal differences in the pro‐fracking and anti‐fracking advocacy coalitions. By using machine learning to classify pro and con Tweets, we gained the ability to achieve significantly greater insight into how these two subgroups employed different narrative and linguistic devices in their Twitter discussions about fracking.Related ArticlesMerry, Melissa K. 2022. “Trump's Tweets as Policy Narratives: Constructing the Immigration Issue via Social Media.” Politics & Policy 50(4): 752–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12487.Robles, Pedro, and Daniel J. Mallinson. 2023. “Catching Up with AI: Pushing toward a Cohesive Governance Framework.” Politics & Policy 51(3): 355–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12529.Shanahan, Elizabeth A., Mark K. McBeth, and Paul L. Hathaway. 2011. “Narrative Policy Framework: The Influence of Media Policy Narratives on Public Opinion.” Politics & Policy 39(3): 373–400. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2011.00295.x.

Examining the Role and Strategies of Advocacy Coalitions in California's Statewide Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Tax Debate (2001-2018).

California's failed attempts to enact a statewide sugary beverage tax presents an opportunity to advance understanding of advocacy coalition behavior. We investigate the participation of advocacy coalitions in California's statewide sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) tax policy debate. Document analysis of legislative bills and newspaper articles collected in 2019. California. A total of 11 SSB tax-related bills were introduced in California's legislature between 2001-2018 according to the state's legislative website. Data sources include legislative bill documents (n = 94) and newspaper articles (n = 138). Guided by the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), we identify advocacy coalitions involved in California's SSB tax debate and explore strategies and arguments used to advance each coalitions' position. Two coalitions (public health, food/beverage industry) were involved in California's statewide SSB tax policy debate. The public health coalition had higher member participation and referred to scientific research evidence while the industry coalition used preemption and financial resources as primary advocacy strategies. The public health coalition frequently presented messaging on the health consequences and financial benefits of SSB taxes. The industry coalition responded by focusing on the potential negative economic impact of a tax. Multiple attempts to enact a statewide SSB tax in California have failed. Our findings add insight into the challenges of enacting an SSB tax considering industry interference. Results can inform future efforts to pass evidence-based nutrition policies.

Crisis and reform in Greece: a theoretical discussion on the domestic policy environment

ABSTRACT This article examines the domestic reform environment in Greece during the Eurozone crisis and explores how it affected the policy implementation process. It provides an integrated theoretical approach by combining the elements of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) and the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF). The ACF and NPF prove useful in explaining the tumultuous implementation of the three memoranda in Greece. The pro-memorandum/pro-change coalition emerged weak in Greece and was destined to fall apart in a short time due to its failure to employ effective narrative strategies. On the other hand, the status-quo coalition and its belief system emerged stronger by utilizing effective narrative strategies. These factors resulted in a lack of broader social and political consensus regarding the necessity of reforms during the initial phase of the crisis, ultimately leading to a continuous cycle of disarray and external conditionality.

Biodiversity conservation, advocacy coalitions, and science-focused disputes: the case of Caymanian coral reef conservation and the proposed port expansion project

An environmental dispute arose in the Cayman Islands where politicians and multinational cruise companies sought an infrastructure upgrade that would destroy 15 acres of coral reef habitat. A competing coalition emerged to contest this project resulting in important policy change: the first ever people’s-initiated referendum. Our research uses the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) to study how policy change is enacted in a biodiversity conservation policy system. We find differences between two coalitions in members, policy beliefs, resources, and strategy. Policy beliefs of both coalitions reveal two competing realities, especially on the subject of science needed to inform a sustainable tourism economy, with scientific misinformation becoming increasingly impactful in policy making. Second, we find that one coalition leveraged the interests of powerful politicians and international corporations to advocate for the infrastructure project, even though the destruction of coral reefs was in defiance of laws. To contest this, the second coalition leveraged volunteers and small donations to enact policy change, successfully triggering the referendum. Our research is significant because in places where volunteering and small donations are less possible, such as in emerging market economies, it is easy to see how well-resourced interests could degrade biodiversity even with domestic laws protecting species and habitats.

Analysing policy change towards the circular economy at the example of EU battery legislation

Batteries play an important role in the decarbonisation of road transport. By looking at the EU battery legislation from 1991 to 2022, policy change in the subsystem and its underlying drivers is analysed. The advocacy coalition framework is used, with a mixed methods approach combining qualitative document analysis and interviews. A strong increase in circular economy aspects is identified, going beyond the coverage of such aspects in other EU product regulations. Coalitions of industry actors and opposing NGOs are identified, but also a broadening of stakeholders involved and less accentuated boundaries between coalitions over time. Several external events were identified that are likely to have contributed to the alignment of economic and environmental interests towards a domestic and sustainable battery supply chain in the EU. Batteries can serve as a blueprint for other product groups, demonstrating that political and industrial momentum can be used to pursue ambitious environmental policies.

Policy communication in times of public health crisis: Longitudinal network modeling of U.S. politician-health agency interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic

Severe public crisis such COVID-19 pandemic entail coordinated communication between politicians and public health agencies. The study explores how and why U.S. politicians share messages from health agencies on social media during COVID. Proposing a multi-theoretical, multi-level (MTML) framework to understand the phenomenon, we draw upon the Advocacy Coalition Framework and Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication theory and conceptualize politicians' public health communication as serving the dual functions of policy and risk communication. With bipartite longitudinal network modeling, our analysis finds a fragmented national message-sharing network deprived of central federal leadership and clustered around state-level actors such as local health agencies and state governors. The politicians' party affiliation and positions on COVID-19 policies significantly impacted whether they would help distribute messages from public health agencies. Health agencies' message features such as expression of certainty and use of analytical words also influenced politicians’ message sharing patterns. These findings suggest the pandemic communication is both a policy advocacy and a risk and crisis communication process. This integrated theoretical approach offers explanations of information sharing dynamics between politicians and health agencies, two major information sources for the public.

How to increase the uptake of circular public procurement? Lessons learned from local authorities in Sweden

PurposeCircular procurement is assumed to foster innovation and influence demand for and supply of goods through criteria setting and dialogue with suppliers. However, even in countries placed at the forefront of sustainability practices such as Sweden, examples of procurement that can truly be considered to be circular are rare. This paper aims to examine circular public procurement practices in a selection of Swedish municipalities and regions through the lens of the Advocacy Coalition Framework. The authors propose a categorisation of municipalities by circular procurement uptake and identify factors that support the acceleration of the circular transition in Sweden.Design/methodology/approachUsing the key informant approach, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews with employees of seven municipalities, one region and one external procurement agency, as well as seven suppliers of various sizes. The authors also analysed procurement documents received from municipalities. Participating organisations represented a variety of Swedish local government structures and local conditions.FindingsThe authors proposed a categorisation of circular procurement uptake. Notably, beginners differ from leaders in circular procurement, most importantly by the level of flexibility policy brokers have within their organisations and by policy brokers’ ability to accommodate changes that materialise between existing organisational structures and set routines.Social implicationsThe fragmented uptake of circular procurement poses a challenge for local businesses interested in implementing circular business models. It also both highlights and exacerbates inequalities in access to resources between sparsely populated, rural municipalities and more urbanised areas.Originality/valueDespite existing national government guidelines for the circular economy transition in Sweden, circular procurement is not fully realised at the local level. In this paper, the authors examine the Swedish experience with circular procurement and propose several steps to improve the uptake of circular procurement by the public authorities. The authors' findings concerning the role of policy brokers may well be generalised to similar socio-cultural contexts.

The pending commitment and ongoing political divide on carbon pricing in Japan

ABSTRACT New discussions on carbon pricing are underway in Japan. In 2012, Japan introduced a nationwide carbon tax named the Global Warming Countermeasure Tax. However, a gap remains between the price level set by this tax and the levels needed for Japan to achieve its 2050 carbon neutrality goal. Combining perspectives from an Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) with insights on brokerage mechanisms in social network analysis (SNA), this study reviews the history of the carbon pricing debate in Japan and also analyzes the dynamics between different advocacy coalitions in the policy network. The evolution of the carbon-pricing debate in Japan is divided into four historical stages: (I) the first attempt to establish a carbon pricing system (from the early 2000s to 2015); (II) fierce debate on the necessity of readjusting the carbon pricing system (from 2016 to 2017); (III) efforts to sustain the carbon pricing discussion (from 2017 to 2019); and (IV) the reopened discussion on carbon pricing under new climate pledge (from 2020 to 2021). The unbridgeable gap between advocacy coalitions and the subsequent long-lasting political stalemate on carbon pricing, to some extent, reflects limited policy learning and related capacities that are deeply entrenched in Japan’s vertically segmented bureaucracy. Barriers and challenges to advancing carbon pricing decisions are discussed together with recommendations on how to create better brokerage mechanisms to strengthen communication, facilitate policy learning and ultimately improve policy decisions.

Coping with a crisis: business interest group coalitions in the wake of the financial crisis

The global financial crisis resulted in a re-examination of the business sector as a whole and its lobbying activity. Nevertheless, research has not analysed the impact that the global financial crisis had on the coalitions within the business interest group community. This article describes in detail how coalitions within the business interest group community have emerged in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. I focus my attention on the Swiss case because of the importance of its financial sector as well as its neo-corporatist system. The empirical approach consists of a process tracing on three policy areas: financial regulation, tax policy and corporate governance, which is elaborated through an extensive document analysis and 28 in-depth interviews. The advocacy coalition framework is used to analyse business interest groups’ beliefs. The findings suggest that different beliefs materialise, especially in the field of financial regulation and partially in tax policy.

The Three Languages of School Choice: A Narrative Policy Framework Toward Better Conversations About Education Freedom

Discourse around school choice often is divisive. Less understood is the effect polarization has within advocate groups. The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) approach offers a systematic approach to understanding how political actors use narratives to affect policy debates. Because NPF assumes bounded relativity, the approach requires a theory of political ideology that can explain why narratives stick within certain ideological boundaries. Because Kling’s three-axes model provides non-mutually exclusive character identification, it can help illuminate in-group overlap and conflict. This essay uses NPF and Kling to examine how narratives are used by various subgroups within the school choice advocacy coalition.

Building a welfare system through bounded learning: A case of Korean long‐term care insurance

AbstractThis article verifies three conditions in its aim to confirm the influence of Japan's experience on the introduction timing and policy model of South Korean long‐term care insurance (LTCI). First, the LTCI systems in Korea and Japan agree in terms of their core principles. Both are based on a separate social insurance system and ensure financial sustainability at the expense of service quality in response to the need to elevate expenditure. Second, the policymaking process reveals the reference relationship between the two systems. The advocacy coalition for LTCI suggested introducing an LTCI based on Japan's experience. However, their rationale was constrained due to the bounded rationality of policy learning. Finally, this article demonstrates that the rival arguments cannot completely explain the introduction of the Korean LTCI without considering the bounded learning argument. Consequently, the results of this study indicate that policy learning is critical to welfare development in latecomer welfare states.

Collaborating for longleaf pine: A case study

Since the mid 1990′s collaborative landscape management, involving varied land users and interest groups, has increased substantially but the utilization of this practice on private land has been sparsely studied. Alongside this increase in collaborative landscape management, there has been an increase in attention on longleaf pine restoration. Once spanning over 93 million acres in the southeastern United States, these trees were reduced to an estimated 3% of their historic range. In response, in 2009, 22 government agencies and independent organizations formed America’s Longleaf Restoration Initiative. The initiative functions in part through local implementation teams, established throughout the range and focused on private as well as public land. To learn more about collaboration and private land, we studied one of the teams, the Sewee Longleaf Conservation Cooperative, in South Carolina.Drawing on the Advocacy Coalition Framework, a well-established model for analysing policy structures and change, we conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with partner organizations to analyze the group’s functions and the frames through which stakeholders view the coalition, their role, and the mission. We found that it has successfully made itself into the policy subsystem for the area and a venue that encompasses all relevant stakeholders. The stakeholders frame longleaf restoration as a positive, at least a secondary belief, and there is minimal conflict surrounding core beliefs. These stakeholders see the collaboration as positive, laud the group’s ability to facilitate access to resources, and utilize the relationship to establish connections, broaden outreach, and develop policy. But while this is a successful collaboration, its successes may be challenged by future events from outside the policy subsystem

How are emotions and beliefs expressed in legislative testimonies? An advocacy coalition approach

AbstractWhile emotions are an inherent component of the human experience that influence behavior, values, and beliefs, they have largely been left out of policy process studies theoretically and methodologically. Using the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), with its focus on how individuals coalesce into coalitions around a set of common beliefs, we begin to situate emotions as a critical component of belief systems and discourse about public policies. This study analyzes legislative testimony from four policies debated during the 2021 Colorado Legislative Session using discourse analysis to identify the emotions and coalitional beliefs. We find that policy actors express emotions and beliefs similarly to other policy actors in the same coalition and differently from policy actors in the opposing coalition. We conclude this paper by discussing the theoretical and methodological contributions of including emotions in the ACF. The move to incorporate the analysis of emotional expressions, and hence the study of affect, into the ACF mirrors the ongoing incorporation of how people feel in politics and not just how they think.

Setting the new European agenda for adult learning 2021-2030

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, international organisations and governments have issued mitigation policies, and (re)oriented broader policy strategies to respond to new problematisations about the future. In this context, the education ministers of the European Union (EU) adopted a Council Resolution on a new European agenda for adult learning 2021-2030. Drawing on the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), this paper examines the political mobilisation and agenda setting behind this Resolution through network ethnography and the analysis of belief systems. The findings point at an increased social dialogue, favoured by an ‘uncommon’ way – as by our informants – through which the Slovenian Ministry of Education pursued the agreed priority at EU level, while holding the rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU. While visibility of adult learning rose under COVID-19, advocacy coalitions formed at national (Slovenian) and European level facilitated stronger alignment in agenda setting among different actors towards a holistic approach that calls for inter-sectorial and multi-stakeholder collaboration.

Leveraging the Collective Impact Model to Advocate for Pregnant and Parenting Teens.

Over 140 000 adolescents in the United States became parents in 2021. Expectant and parenting youth face health and socioeconomic challenges, which in turn affect the health of their children. This case study describes the formation and outcomes of a citywide network, the District of Columbia Network for Expectant and Parenting Teens (DC NEXT), an interdisciplinary collaboration that aims to prioritize the voices of expectant and parenting teens and build their capacity to make healthy decisions about relationships, sex, parenting, and education. By employing the 5 principles of collective impact, DC NEXT has been able to successfully bring together multiple stakeholders and a context team of teen parents with lived experience. Accomplishments include direct engagement with 550 youth, caregivers, and community members, completing a health and well-being survey, improving access to essential programs and resources, and training hundreds of staff members to provide trauma-informed, human-centered care. DC NEXT may serve as a model for others seeking to develop interdisciplinary community-based advocacy coalitions.

An evaluation of the Australian Community Pharmacy Agreement from a public policy perspective: industry policy cloaked as health policy?

BackgroundA series of Community Pharmacy Agreements (Agreements) between the Federal government and a pharmacy-owners’ body, the Pharmacy Guild of Australia (PGA) have been influential policy in Australian community pharmacy (CP) since 1990. While ostensibly to support the public’s access and use of medicines, the core elements of the Agreements have been remuneration for dispensing and rules that limit the establishment of new pharmacies. Criticism has focused on the self-interest of pharmacy owners, the exclusion of other pharmacy stakeholders from the Agreement negotiations, the lack of transparency, and the impact on competition. The objective of this paper is to determine the true nature of the policy by examining the evolution of the CPA from a policy theory perspective.MethodsA qualitative evaluation of all seven Agreement documents and their impact was undertaken using policy theories including a linear policy development model, Multiple Streams Framework, Incremental Theory, the Advocacy Coalition Framework, the Theory of Economic Regulation, the Punctuated Equilibrium Framework, and Elite Theory. The Agreements were evaluated using four lenses: their objectives, evidentiary base, stakeholders and beneficiaries.ResultsThe PGA has acted as an elite organisation with long-standing influence on the policy’s development and implementation. Notable has been the failure of other pharmacy stakeholders to establish broad-based advocacy coalitions in order to influence the Agreements. The incremental changes negotiated every 5 years to the core elements of the Agreements have supported the publics’ access to medication, provided stability for the government, and security for existing pharmacy owners. Their impact on the evolution of pharmacists’ scope of practice and through that, on the public’s safe and appropriate use of medication, has been less clear.ConclusionsThe Agreements can be characterised predominantly as industry policy benefiting pharmacy owners, rather than health policy. An emerging issue is whether incremental change will continue to be an adequate policy response to the social, political, and technological changes that are affecting health care, or whether policy disruption is likely to arise.

Gendered advocacy coalitions and the Istanbul Convention: a comparative analysis of Bulgaria and Poland

ABSTRACT The Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, known as the Istanbul Convention or IC, is a contested issue in Central and Eastern Europe. This article investigates this matter further by focusing specifically on Bulgaria and Poland using the most similar systems design; the former country has not ratified the convention, but the latter has. In this article, we draw on the literature on gender politics and public policy and on law and society studies to refine the advocacy coalition framework and propose a novel perspective on (non-)ratification that accentuates the role of anti-gender and feminist advocacy coalitions. Specifically, this article links the (non-)ratification of the IC to the complex modes of interaction between partisan, societal, and legal actors who make up adversarial advocacy coalitions. This article also highlights that deep core beliefs widen the cultural cleavage, with the traditional being pitted against the feminist in this case, thereby instigating “culture wars” in both countries.

Problem structuring, wrong-problem problems and metagovernance as the strategic management of intractable positions: The case of the EU GM Crop Regulatory Framework controversy

Analyses of ‘wicked problems’ often lead to recommendations for collaborative governance as a metagovernance solution. The case of deadlocked European Union genetically modified crop authorization processes offers a good example. However, the stalemate is not the result of the inherent ‘wickedness’ of the problem posed by the risk of genetic modification technology applied to agricultural production of food and feed. Rather, the policy lock-in results from the structure and dynamics of the policy network. Rigid interactions between the same institutionalized policy actors sustain instigation and power games interlaced with question–answer or probing games that jointly reproduce a clash between differently structured problems over and over again. This has created a typical wrong-problem problem situation: the EC imposing ‘safety’ and ‘consumer choice’ of GM crops as a structured problem on member states, business interests and anti-GM NGOs that, for different reasons, saw the cultivation of GM crops as an uncertain and normatively conflicted activity. Neither of the issue network’s opposing discourses and advocacy coalitions gained sufficient political power to bring their preferred problem structuring journeys to closure. Critical reflection on practices of problem structuring suggest scepticism about collaborative meta-governance and stakeholder dialogues as solutions to deal with wickedness. Instead, we argue that the European Commission’s recent coping strategy constitutes incomplete but intelligent management of relational distances in regard to a complex problem.

Advocacy coalitions and policy change for decarbonisation of international maritime transport: The case of FuelEU maritime

The legislators of the European Union (EU) have agreed on the FuelEU Maritime regulation, so far, the world's most ambitious pathway to maritime decarbonisation. FuelEU Maritime establishes a common EU regulatory framework to stimulate an increased share of renewable and low-carbon fuels in the fuel mix of international maritime transport. This article analyses, through the lens of the Advocacy Coalition Framework, the policy process leading to the political agreement on the FuelEU Maritime regulation. Core beliefs of two different advocacy coalitions including the European Commission, the Council of Ministers, EU Member States, the European Parliament and different IGs are identified like Transport & Environment and the European Community Shipping Association, as are the paths to policy change. The agreement on the FuelEU Maritime regulation follows the Paris Agreement and the following international discussions on how to curb the climate impact from shipping, the presentation of the ‘European Green Deal’ with a European Climate Law and the presentation of a broad package of EU climate, energy and transport legislation. In addition, it is a result of problem-solving bargaining between the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament.