45 4.7 – ADVOCACY COALITIONS
- ADVOCACY COALITIONS
Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith (1993) developed the Advocacy Coalition Framework to explain policymaking and policy change over time. Advocacy coalitions consist of people “from a variety of positions (e.g., elected and agency officials, interest group leaders, researchers) who share a specific belief system— i.e., a set of basic values, causal assumptions, and problem perceptions—and who show a nontrivial degree of coordinated activity overtime” (Sabatier, 1988; Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith ,1993). The framework theorizes that competition between coalitions of actors—who advocate for their preferred solution to a public problem—is a common characteristic of the policy process. The ACF assumes that policies are made in an uncertain and ambiguous policy making environment with multiple actors and government levels involved, taking place over the course of many years, possibly decades.
The advocacy coalition framework was developed to inform the overall policy process, but many of its lessons apply to agenda setting. For instance, the framework centers on policymaking that includes many individuals, groups, and organizations. Policy change occurs when these groups work together to portray policy problems in a way that will increase the likelihood that they receive attention from policymakers. This feature of the advocacy coalition framework informs the agenda setting process through translation of public problems into policy solutions. According to Mintrom, “The quality of the collective interactions in the coalition and the coordination ability of those seeking to promote policy change greatly affect the likelihood that change will occur” (Mintrom, 2019). Thus, a variety of individuals and groups, with a persuasively defined problem statement and viable solution, are in a good position to capture the attention of policymakers and alter the agenda.
Earlier in the chapter, we discussed the importance of group competition to define a problem and bring the problem to the attention of policymakers, thereby setting the agenda. Consider the debate on gun laws that ensues after each mass shooting in the United States. Sabatier (1998) remarked that pro- and anti-gun coalitions are particularly suited to the parameters of the ACF as “these subsystems seem to be characterized by well-defined coalitions driven by belief- driven conflict . . . at multiple levels of government.”
After mass shootings, coalitions—comprising citizens, interest groups, policymakers, and other government actors—act quickly to identify and define the cause of mass shootings. The resulting definitions are guided by the coalition’s core values. Sabatier (1998) explains that the ACF takes into account policy core beliefs and values which “represent a coalition’s basic normative commitments and causal perceptions across an entire policy domain or subsystem. ACF assumes that policy core beliefs are the fundamental ‘glue’ of coalitions.” As an example, groups supporting gun control argue that the problem results from the easy availability of guns and, in particular, of automatic weapons with high capacity magazines. On the other hand, pro-gun groups identify mental health, improper parenting, and even video game violence as the cause of gun violence. Powerful gun rights lobbyists and the history of the Second Amendment are unique to American culture. We see, therefore, that values and belief structures are among the many influential factors that set the context for what advocacy coalitions will and will not consider for inclusion on the public agenda.
