LIST OF PANELS

Over the past few decades, the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) has been one of the most applied and investigated approaches for understanding and theorizing the policy process. The framework has provided the basis for three lines of theoretical inquiry, focusing on policy change, policy learning, and the nature of advocacy coalitions. The burgeoning ACF literature includes applications in political systems around the world as well as applications in a wide variety of policy issues and policy sectors.

General Objectives
The general objective of this panel is to advance the development of the ACF – and the study of policy processes – through a critical stocktaking of current conceptual and theoretical debates in the ACF. This includes issues related to the framework itself, as well as issues pertaining to the ACF’s three theoretical lines of inquiry.

Research Questions
A non-exhaustive list of research questions considered on the panel may include: the general utility of the ACF for understanding policy processes; lessons for policy practitioners derived from ACF findings; potential overlaps and syntheses with other theoretical approaches; ontological issues in the three lines of theoretical inquiry; conceptual issues; methodological challenges; investigations of existing ACF hypotheses; and, propositions of new ACF hypotheses.

Scientific Relevance
The ACF focuses on the essence of government policy-making by conceptualizing and theorizing how civil society pressures are (or are not) translated into public policy outcomes. These questions are especially important in democratic countries in an era when the legitimacy of democracy seems under threat. The panel will provide an important opportunity for ACF scholars to share their work, learn from others’ practices, and build connections, all of which are essential to shared scientific enterprise.

This panel welcomes papers that engage the ACF in the study of policy processes in any political system and policy area. Examples of relevant papers include:

·      Papers that explore central ACF concepts, such as policy subsystems, coalition opportunity structures, coalition resources, etc.

·      Studies that investigate established or novel hypotheses on the formation and maintenance of advocacy coalitions.

·      Studies that investigate established or novel hypotheses on policy change.

·      Studies that investigate established or novel hypotheses on policy learning.

·      Papers that engage methodological challenges in the ACF.

·      Papers that engage ontological challenges in the ACF.

·      Reviews of ACF literature.

·      Replications of existing ACF studies.

·      Overviews of ACF-related lessons for policy practitioners.