The Advocacy Coalition Framework

“Who better than Hank Jenkins-Smith and Christopher Weible to take stock of the amazing growth and the still growing potential of the Advocacy Coalition Framework? This volume combines the editors decades of experience with the ACF with the best of current scholarship to assess the next chapter in the development of this crucial framework.”

—Thomas Birkland, North Carolina State University, USA

 “And just when you thought you knew all there is to know about ACF, The Advocacy Coalition Framework comes along. It offers rich insights in the backstory of ACF; it also encourages colouring outside the textbook ACF box. This volume is a pleasurable must-read for all students of public policy.”

—Evangelia Petridou, Mid Sweden University, Sweden, and NTNU Social Research, Norway

This open access book provides an updated and integrated analysis of the Advocacy Coalition Framework, more than thirty years after its conception. First devised in the 1980s to help explain change within public policy processes, the framework has been widely applied, criticized and revised over the last three decades, implemented by policy scholars across the globe, and in hundreds of different languages. 

Edited by the two foremost ACF scholars, this book analyses the current state and future directions of the Advocacy Coalition Framework. The first section provides a concise overview of the purpose of the framework, as well as its application in previous research. This is followed by eleven cross-section case studies that showcase some of the most exciting developments in ACF scholarship around the globe. It concludes with recommendations for adapting the ACF for future use, as well as new directions of research. 

Hank C. Jenkins-Smith is George Lynn Cross Research Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Oklahoma, USA.

Christopher M. Weible is University of Colorado Distinguished Professor in the School of Public Affairs, University of Colorado Denver, USA, and Visiting Professor in the Department of Business Administration, Technology and Social Sciences, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden.