By David López García
In his précis, Jason Rochford shares an example of how the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) can be applied in policy analysis, finding it promising for its usability but at the same time pointing out reservations on the intricacy of the framework and its limited applicability in settings in which there are no visible coalitions. Building on Rochford’s précis, I will argue that frameworks are useful analytical tools to advance policy science, but it is frameworks reaching its explanatory potential what fosters the development of new frameworks able to explain what its predecessors cannot.
The merit of the policy cycle/process heuristic and the ACF is that they both provide largely accepted research frameworks allowing scholars and analysts to work together in a long-term, coordinated research agenda. This is better described for the case of the ACF, as Jenkins-Smith, Nohrsted, Weible and Sabatier (2014) argue that the purpose of the framework is “to provide a shared research platform that enables analysts to work together in describing, explaining, and sometimes predicting phenomena within and across different contexts, (…) across disciplines, from different substantive policy areas, and from different parts of the world” (p. 188). Frameworks are not the same as theories. While the latter state concepts and relationships in the form of testable and falsifiable hypotheses or propositions, frameworks provide a common vocabulary to support multiple theories which emphasize a smaller set of questions, variables and relationships (Jenkins-Smith, et al., 2014). This means that frameworks are neither testable nor falsifiable; instead, they can only be more or less useful to analysts and researchers.
The theoretical development in policy decision-making that the field achieved thanks to the policy cycles/stages approach is an example of the usefulness of frameworks in advancing policy sciences. By concentrating efforts in understanding how policy actors take decisions, the field was able to identify the rationalist/incrementalist dichotomy, and more recently, advancing towards more sophisticated models of decision making like the mixed-scanning model, the garbage-can model, and the multiple-arenas and multiple-rounds models (Howlett, Ramesh, & Pearl, 2009). However, policy frameworks don’t come without caveats. While the policy cycle/stages approach brought a new richness to policy science, it has also oriented scholars towards looking at one stage at the time, thereby neglecting the idea of an entire, non-linear process in which stages/cycles can overlap (deLeon, 1999).
But it is exactly these limitations what drives scholars to transcend their contemporary frameworks of analysis. One example of this is the development of the ACF in the early eighties. It was Paul Sabatier who pointed out the shortcomings of the policy cycle/stages framework, arguing for the need to overcome its limitations, and to develop an alternative framework that acknowledged the role of scientific and technical information in policy debates, a comprehensive approach to understanding policy change over time, and understanding the forms of political behaviors shaping policy (Jenkins-Smith, et al., 2014). As a result, in 1986 Paul Sabatier proposed the Advocacy Coalition Framework, integrated by a series of assumptions and general conceptual categories providing a platform to further the research about advocacy coalitions, policy learning, and policy change.
Jason’s précis sharply points to one of the limitations of the ACF, namely its limited applicability in settings in which there are no visible coalitions. To overcome this kind of pitfalls, the researcher/analyst can resort to theories from alternative frameworks, like the policy cycle/stages framework. One of the latest developments of the policy cycle approach is the multiple arenas and multiple rounds theory of decision-making. According to it, policy decision-making tends to occur in different locations or venues, and takes place in different rounds in which the results of each round fed back into other arenas for continued discussion and debate, to the degree that individuals often do not even realize when a decision has been made (Howlett, et al, 2009). By making a mix of the two frameworks, the researcher/analyst is able to better understand what is going on in its research setting.
I don’t see frameworks as being mutually exclusive, but complementing each other to achieve a more nuanced analysis of the issues under study. Furthermore, by using a framework and identifying its pitfalls, researchers are able to identify those areas of inquiry in which a framework is not useful to propose theories explaining specific relationships, thus being pushed to develop new frameworks of analysis to overcome the identified caveats.
References
DeLeon, P. (1999) The stages approach to the policy process: What has it done? Where is it going? In, Sabatier, P. (Ed.) Theories of the Policy Process, Westview Press.
Howlett, M., Ramesh, M & Perl, A. (2009) Studying public policy: Policy cycles & policy subsystems. Oxford University Press.
Jenkins-Smith, H., Nohrstedt, D., Weible, C. & Sabatier, P. (2014) The advocacy coalition framework: Foundations, evolution, and ongoing research. In Sabatier, P. and Weible, D (Eds.) Theories of the Policy Process, Third Edition, Westveiw Pess.
In his précis, Jason Rochford shares an example of how the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) can be applied in policy analysis, finding it promising for its usability but at the same time pointing out reservations on the intricacy of the framework and its limited applicability in settings in which there are no visible coalitions. Building on Rochford’s précis, I will argue that frameworks are useful analytical tools to advance policy science, but it is frameworks reaching its explanatory potential what fosters the development of new frameworks able to explain what its predecessors cannot.
The merit of the policy cycle/process heuristic and the ACF is that they both provide largely accepted research frameworks allowing scholars and analysts to work together in a long-term, coordinated research agenda. This is better described for the case of the ACF, as Jenkins-Smith, Nohrsted, Weible and Sabatier (2014) argue that the purpose of the framework is “to provide a shared research platform that enables analysts to work together in describing, explaining, and sometimes predicting phenomena within and across different contexts, (…) across disciplines, from different substantive policy areas, and from different parts of the world” (p. 188). Frameworks are not the same as theories. While the latter state concepts and relationships in the form of testable and falsifiable hypotheses or propositions, frameworks provide a common vocabulary to support multiple theories which emphasize a smaller set of questions, variables and relationships (Jenkins-Smith, et al., 2014). This means that frameworks are neither testable nor falsifiable; instead, they can only be more or less useful to analysts and researchers.
The theoretical development in policy decision-making that the field achieved thanks to the policy cycles/stages approach is an example of the usefulness of frameworks in advancing policy sciences. By concentrating efforts in understanding how policy actors take decisions, the field was able to identify the rationalist/incrementalist dichotomy, and more recently, advancing towards more sophisticated models of decision making like the mixed-scanning model, the garbage-can model, and the multiple-arenas and multiple-rounds models (Howlett, Ramesh, & Pearl, 2009). However, policy frameworks don’t come without caveats. While the policy cycle/stages approach brought a new richness to policy science, it has also oriented scholars towards looking at one stage at the time, thereby neglecting the idea of an entire, non-linear process in which stages/cycles can overlap (deLeon, 1999).
But it is exactly these limitations what drives scholars to transcend their contemporary frameworks of analysis. One example of this is the development of the ACF in the early eighties. It was Paul Sabatier who pointed out the shortcomings of the policy cycle/stages framework, arguing for the need to overcome its limitations, and to develop an alternative framework that acknowledged the role of scientific and technical information in policy debates, a comprehensive approach to understanding policy change over time, and understanding the forms of political behaviors shaping policy (Jenkins-Smith, et al., 2014). As a result, in 1986 Paul Sabatier proposed the Advocacy Coalition Framework, integrated by a series of assumptions and general conceptual categories providing a platform to further the research about advocacy coalitions, policy learning, and policy change.
Jason’s précis sharply points to one of the limitations of the ACF, namely its limited applicability in settings in which there are no visible coalitions. To overcome this kind of pitfalls, the researcher/analyst can resort to theories from alternative frameworks, like the policy cycle/stages framework. One of the latest developments of the policy cycle approach is the multiple arenas and multiple rounds theory of decision-making. According to it, policy decision-making tends to occur in different locations or venues, and takes place in different rounds in which the results of each round fed back into other arenas for continued discussion and debate, to the degree that individuals often do not even realize when a decision has been made (Howlett, et al, 2009). By making a mix of the two frameworks, the researcher/analyst is able to better understand what is going on in its research setting.
I don’t see frameworks as being mutually exclusive, but complementing each other to achieve a more nuanced analysis of the issues under study. Furthermore, by using a framework and identifying its pitfalls, researchers are able to identify those areas of inquiry in which a framework is not useful to propose theories explaining specific relationships, thus being pushed to develop new frameworks of analysis to overcome the identified caveats.
References
DeLeon, P. (1999) The stages approach to the policy process: What has it done? Where is it going? In, Sabatier, P. (Ed.) Theories of the Policy Process, Westview Press.
Howlett, M., Ramesh, M & Perl, A. (2009) Studying public policy: Policy cycles & policy subsystems. Oxford University Press.
Jenkins-Smith, H., Nohrstedt, D., Weible, C. & Sabatier, P. (2014) The advocacy coalition framework: Foundations, evolution, and ongoing research. In Sabatier, P. and Weible, D (Eds.) Theories of the Policy Process, Third Edition, Westveiw Pess.