What do advocates know about policymaking? Revealing process in the Advocacy Coalition Framework

Abstract:

The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) theorizes the causal mechanisms behind policy change, with a fundamental acknowledgement that such change cannot occur without advocates’ skillful strategic actions. However, the framework does not fully explain what is needed for ‘boundedly rational’ advocates to take skillful strategic actions within the context of their belief systems.

This article proposes extricating the currently implicit concepts of process-oriented beliefs, learning, and information (i.e., what advocates believe, learn, and know about the policymaking process itself) to help fill this theoretical gap in the ACF. These concepts are investigated using a comparative case study of policy and process changes imposed by the European Union – via the Habitats Directive – onto rural actors in France and Sweden. The success of forestry advocates’ strategic responses can be understood when using the ACF’s implicit concepts of process beliefs, learning, and information.