The Advocacy Coalition Framework: Lessons from Applications in African Countries

Abstract

Although the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) emerged in Western democratic contexts, scholars increasingly apply it in other parts of the world to analyze diverse policy topics. These cross-country comparisons have provided a means for advancing comparative research, drawing lessons about policy processes, and offering opportunities to refine the framework. In this paper, we provide an overview of the ACF and its use as an analytical tool for comparative research. Through a systematic literature review, we identified 27 applications in 15 African countries, including democracies, authoritarian governments, and hybrid systems. Based on these applications published in peer-reviewed journals, we explore this illustrated collection of case studies to see how the ACF has been applied outside of Western democracies and to identify strengths and weaknesses of the ACF as a portable framework. These applications confirm the basic postulations of the ACF, but we also identify a few nuances and expectations. Based on these insights, we finally lay out a research agenda and a new generation of questions for applying the ACF in the African context as well as globally.

Analysing the stability of advocacy coalitions and policy frames in Ghana’s oil and gas governance

“…Last, in Germany and Sweden, scholars applied the framework to study pension policy (Leifeld, 2013) and climate policy (Ingold, 2011) respectively. These applications, therefore, demonstrate ACF's well-established status in the policy process field (Henry et al, 2014;Jenkins-Smith et al, 2017;Pierce et al, 2017;Osei-Kojo et al, 2022).…”

Narratives, evidence and public policy in crisis situations

“…The study is not only relevant for understanding the Trump administration in particular and transnational processes of policy diffusion and transfer in general. Most importantly, it also contributes to the recent debate on the applicability of the theories of the policy process to authoritarian political systems (Bandelow et al, 2022; Dool, 2022; Hornung et al, 2022; Osei‐Kojo et al, 2022).…”

“…The study is not only relevant for understanding the Trump administration in particular and transnational processes of policy diffusion and transfer in general. Most importantly, it also contributes to the recent debate on the applicability of the theories of the policy process to authoritarian political systems (Bandelow et al, 2022;Dool, 2022;Hornung et al, 2022;Osei-Kojo et al, 2022).The second contribution of the issue also uses the NPF for analysis of policy processes outside established democracies. Schlaufer, Pilkina, et al ( 2022) explore how civil society organizations (CSO) use social media to influence waste management in Russia.…”

“…叙事成分(无论是形式还是内容)的变化不仅归因于危机带来的直接挑战。尤其是在跨国危机的情况下，有理由假设叙事也可能具有跨国效应。本期第一篇文章由Yuhao Ba、Kathryn Schwaebe 和 Thomas Birkland(2022)撰写，他们研究了中国环境学者对美国的描述。他们分析了特朗普政府对环境政策的影响是否反映在中国的叙事中。Ba等人发现了一个效应，但该效应的修辞性大于实质性。在整个 2010‐2020年研究期间，美国被视为中国的环境政策盟友。该研究不仅特别有助于理解特朗普政府，也在整体上有助于理解政策扩散和转移的跨国过程。最重要的是，它还为近期关于政策过程理论对威权政治制度的适用性辩论作贡献(Bandelow et al, 2022; Dool, 2022; Hornung et al, 2022; Osei‐Kojo et al, 2022)。…”

“…El estudio no solo es relevante para comprender la administración Trump en particular y los procesos transnacionales de difusión y transferencia de políticas en general. Lo que es más importante, también contribuye al debate reciente sobre la aplicabilidad de las teorías del proceso político a los sistemas políticos autoritarios (Bandelow et al, 2022; Dool, 2022; Hornung et al, 2022; Osei‐Kojo et al, 2022).…”