Cooptation of ENGOs or Treadmill of Production? Advocacy Coalitions and Climate Change Policy in Finland

Broadbent

2017

Public Administration

The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) asserts that disagreement over policy core beliefs divides organizations into competing coalitions. We apply Discourse Network Analysis to 1,410 statements in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today to investigate what kinds of beliefs contribute to coalition formation in the climate change policy debate in the news media in the United States. We find that the beliefs concerning the reality of anthropogenic climate change, the importance of ecology over economy and desirability of governmental regulation divide organizations into three advocacy coalitions: the economy, ecology and science coalitions. Policy preferences such as cap and trade do not; they find support across coalition lines. Based on these findings, we suggest that ACF theory could be clarified to better account for how beliefs concerning policy instruments contribute to coalition formation. In some policy domains, policy instruments are where opposing coalitions find agreement. In others, they are more divisive.

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some other types of research material such as surveys are superior in the sense that they can measure both beliefs and coordination of action (e.g. Elgin and Weible ; Gronow and Ylä‐Anttila ), but they have other limitations, such as missing data due to low response rates.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Advocacy coalitions, beliefs and climate change policy in the United States

Kukkonen

Broadbent

2017

Public Administration

“…How actors give meaning to problems shapes their attitudes and beliefs about potential policy ideas, which in turn can shape how they interact with others as they seek collaborative relationships with those that wish to see the same policy decisions and outcomes as themselves (Sabatier ; Weible ). The tendency for policy actors to collaborate with those with similar beliefs to their own is a recurring finding in the literature (Leifeld and Schneider ; Jasny et al ; Fischer and Sciarini ; Wagner and Ylä‐Anttila ; Gronow and Ylä‐Anttila ).…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 96%

Explaining collaboration in consensual and conflictual governance networks

Gronow

Wagner

2019

Public Administration

Self Cite

The conditions under which policy beliefs and influential actors shape collaborative behaviour in governance networks are not well understood. This article applies exponential random graph models to network data from Finland and Sweden to investigate how beliefs, reputational power and the role of public authorities structure collaboration ties in the two countries’ climate change governance networks. Results show that only in Finland's conflictual climate policy domain do actors collaborate with those with similar beliefs and with reputational power, while only in Sweden's consensual climate policy domain do public authorities play central impartial coordinating roles. These results indicate that conflict is present in a governance network when beliefs and reputational power determine collaboration and that it is absent when public authorities occupy central roles. They also suggest that relative success in climate policy action is likely to occur when public authorities take on network manager roles.

“…In line with the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), the coalitions are constituted not only by collaboration ties but also by similarity of beliefs, as measured by our pro-mitigation beliefs composite variable. Based on the constituency of the three subgroups and the policy core beliefs of these organisations, we judge that these three subgroups are indeed coalitions (see also Gronow & Ylä-Anttila 2016). We label them Tripartite, Government and Research, and NGO Coalition.…”

Section: Tripartite Strengthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Divergent neighbors: corporatism and climate policy networks in Finland and Sweden

Gronow

Carson

et al. 2019

Environmental Politics

Self Cite

Previous research has suggested that corporatist polities tend to enact more ambitious environmental policies than others. Here it is argued that the macro concept of corporatism can be dissected into three components: inclusiveness, consensualism and strength of tripartite organisations. These components of corporatism can be measured at the meso-level of policy networks. It is proposed that inclusiveness and consensualism are related to ambitious climate policy but exclusive tripartite coalitions can be detrimental for the ambitiousness of climate policy. This argument is backed by evidence from policy network surveys in two similar corporatist countries where climate change policies diverge: Sweden, where policies are ambitious, and Finland, where they are less so. It is found that in Sweden the climate change policy network is more consensual and slightly more inclusive, while in Finland tripartite organisations play a strong role.