Policy Networks and Advocacy Coalitions: Explaining Policy Change and Stability in UK Industrial Pollution Policy?

By Adrian Smith. 2000

142 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Policy network analysis (PNA) and the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) are relatively recent additions to the toolbox of policy analysis. The author explores the strengths and limitations of each through comparative application. The two frameworks are used to analyse policy change and stability in the UK industrial pollution sector over a period of more than twenty-five years. Innovations derived from policy-oriented learning generated in the 1970s were initially rejected before being implemented fourteen years later. The case study illustrates the limits of both theories. Change was not an open competition between advocates of different core policy beliefs. Nevertheless the ACF analysis of contrasting, broadly defined, beliefs can help explain some events beyond policy networks. Resource interdependencies in the policy network provide a good explanation for the stabilities exhibited in the case study. PNA can also explain why some actors were excluded from the policy process whereas others exercised decisionmaking and nondecisionmaking power. In combination, the more fundamental agency-oriented and structure-oriented emphases on beliefs and resources associated with the ACF and PNA, respectively, can enrich policy analysis.

Subfields: Political Science and International Relations, Public Administration

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b1706ebedf63f4a018d783cf537a32aaf48abfbf

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Citations in the corpus

Transforming the Energy Sector : The evolution of technological systems in renewable energy technology (2004, background): “…recognized in the political science literature (see e.g. Sabatier, 1998; Smith, 2000), which argues that policy making takes place in a context where advocacy coalitions, made up of a range of actors sharing a set of beliefs, compete in influencing policy in line with those beliefs (Smith, 2000).”
The governance of sustainable socio-technical transitions (2005, background): “But what is the basis of this power? What is the source of influence over others, over agendas and over perspectives? At the general level of governance, Rhodes’ (1981)‘power dependency framework’ holds that one source of influence is the way important resources are distributed amongst actors ( Smit”
Harnessing theories of the policy process for analysing the politics of sustainability transitions: A critical survey (2017, methodology): “Clair, 1993), pollution policy (Smith, 2000), transport policy (Henry, 2011) as well as tourism policy (Dela Santa, 2013).”
The Dependent Variable Problem in the Study of Policy Change: Understanding Policy Change as a Methodological Problem (2009, background): “Fourth, many scholars studying policy dynamics agree that paradigmatic transformations or “punctuations” usually result from the effects of “external perturbations” that cause widespread disruptions in existing policy ideas, beliefs, actors, institutions and practices (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 19”
Functions in innovation systems: A framework for analysing energy system dynamics and identifying goals for system-building activities by entrepreneurs and policy makers (2008, background): ““Political networks” or advocacy coalitions, made up of a range of actors sharing a set of beliefs, seek to influence the political agenda in line with those beliefs in competition with other coalitions (Smith, 2000; Rao, 2004).”
Understanding policy stability and change. the interplay of advocacy coalitions and epistemic communities, windows of opportunity, and Dutch coastal flooding policy 1945–20031 (2005, background): “Nevertheless, even when there is a strong policy monopoly within a policy domain, parties are sometimes able to alter the contents of policies fundamentally (Dudley and Richardson 1996; Mintrom and Vergari 1996; Pralle 2003; Richardson 2000; Smith 2000).”