Theories of the Policy Process - Essay Example

The advocacy coalition framework (ACF) and punctuated equilibrium (PE) models both examine the policy process and what forces influence it. These forces, usually independent of direct governmental control, can sway the policy process one way or another. Political scientists have long pondered the forces that influence the policy process. In studying these forces, many researchers emphasized the important role of advocacy groups, also known as interest groups or pressure groups. Although many political scientists link the origins of such studies on interest groups to David Truman's (1951) work on group theory, the emphasis on interest group research actually started with Arthur Bentley. Bentley's (1908) research offered preliminary insights on how advocacy groups affect the policy process. After Bentley's research, numerous studies on interest groups followed, with each study revealing the importance of interest groups to the policymaking process and the difficulty of measuring the impact of interest group influence on the policymaking process (Baumgartner & Leech, 1998, p. 45-46). In addition to interest groups, political scientists also emphasized the role of bureaucrats, policymakers, and the media in the policy process. All of these entities could influence a specific policy subsystem such as agricultural subsidy policy, pesticide regulatory policy, or any policy considered by policymakers. Over the course of 100 years, political scientists used case studies and quantitative analyses to further examine the impact of these variables on the policy process. By the late 1980s, this collection of research helped to provide the theoretical backdrop to models such as the ACF and PE that attempted to theorize about policy process. The ACF owes much of its intellectual heritage to research on the impact of interest groups on the policy process. This line of research started in the early 1900s and can be roughly divided into four eras. In the first era, lasting from 1900- 1930s, researchers examined the pressure tactics of groups and the impact of those tactics on the policy process. Significant works during this era included Arthur Bentley's (1908) The Process of Government. Bentley broadly theorized that groups compete against one another in order to influence governmental processes (p. 222,269). Although Bentley was not concerned with constructing specific theories on group activity, his research was the first to suggest that groups influenced the policy process. It also helped political scientists refocus their research efforts to other aspects of government aside from legalistic examinations of governing institutions (Bentley, 1908, p. 162). Similar works that examined the role of interest groups, or pressure groups as they were commonly known during this period, followed with each work examining the importance of interest groups in policymaking and reconciling that notion with theories of government and democracy (Griffith, 1939; Herring, 1929; Odegard, 1928; Schattschneider, 193 5; see also Cleveland, 19 13; Crawford, 1939; Croly, 19 15; Pollock, 1927; Zeller, 1937). Even more than Arthur Bentley, whose work was generally not even recognized until the 1950s, these researchers made the study of interest groups' impact on the policy process noteworthy (Garson, 1978, p. 77). However, it was not until the 1950s that interest group research really became important to political science. During this second era of research, lasting approximately from the 1940s- 1960s, the study of interest group influence on the policy process reached its scholarly zenith as the administrative size of the federal government increased. Research during this time period reaffirmed the importance of interest groups to policymaking (Griffith, 195 1 ; Latham, 1952; Truman, 1951 ; see also Key, 1952; McConnell, 1966). Some of the most influential research also extended the notion of interest group influence on the policy process to the notion that interest groups, policymakers, and agencies jointly controlled the policy process. For example, Selznick (1949) showed how agencies could co-opt local interest groups in order to provide support for a specific agency and policy (p. 21 7). This was important because once an agency had support from these groups it helped to solidify their clientele or customer base. As a result, the agency could ensure its survival by actively promoting the policy interests of their clientele groups (Long, 1949, p. 257; Simon, Smithburg, & Thompson, 1950, p. 385). Over time, this type of relationship often turned into a permanent symbiotic relationship where policymakers and interest groups mutually benefited from policies that did not always benefit the public at large. Researchers exploring the physical structure of this relationship developed the notion of subgovernments or iron triangles. In this type of relationship, an interest group, an agency, and a legislative committee formed a close relationship over a specific policy area in order to influence it for the mutual benefit of all those in the relationship (Freeman, 1955, p. 31; Mass, 1950, p. 583). Research during the second era often used a case study approach where the researcher learned all about a specific policy subsystem. However, as the 1960s ended, political scientists began to realize that their studies of policy subsystems did not reflect the complex reality of the policy process. As a result, as the second era came to a close, the importance of examining the influence of interest groups on the policy process faded for a majority of political scientists. This shift in interest group research occurred because political scientists realized that previous attempts to examine the relationship between interest groups and the policy process were too simple. Therefore, some political scientists started to focus on other elements of interest groups. This originated with the theoretical insights provided by Mancur Olson (1971) on why groups mobilize (i.e. the logic of collective action). After Olson, interest group research became divided into two areas: collective action analyses that built off Olson's work, and influence studies that continued to show the effect of interest groups on policy (Baumgartner and Leech 1998, p. 7). In these two camps of research, more theoretical and methodological progress occurred in collective action analyses rather than influence studies. As a result, during the third era of research that examined the influence of interest groups on the policy process, researchers backed off from many of the key findings of the previous era. During this time, lasting from the 1970s-1980s, interest group research focused on quantitative analyses that emphasized why rational individuals would join interest groups rather than case studies that focused on how interest groups influenced the policy process within a specific policy subsystem. However, some progress still occurred in influence studies as researchers tried to quantitatively measure the influence of interest groups on policymaking (Culhane, 1981 ; Fowler & Shaiko, 1987; Meier & Van Lohuizen, 1978). Additional progress in influence studies occurred when other researchers working slightly after this era examined specific lobbying efforts of interest groups on the policy process. Building off research conducted by Lester Milbrath (1963) that defined the approach to lobbying surveys, researchers such as Jeff Berry (1977), Jack Walker (1991), and John Heinz, Edward Laumann, Robert Nelson, and Robert Salisbury (1 993) analyzed effective lobbying strategies, described daily lobbying activities, and continued to offer insights on how lobbying groups influenced the policy process. The results of these studies suggested that successful lobbying efforts were complex and often depended on interest groups' knowledge of their own organizational situation, as well as specific knowledge of the policy subsystem they were trying to influence (Berry, 1977, p. 45; Heinz et al., 1993, p. 371). In addition, the study by Heinz et al. (1993) argued that a major interest group influence strategy included joining other interest groups in lobbying coalitions is (p. 15). However, the Heinz et al. study also acknowledged that due to constantly changing political conditions, most interest groups operated their lobbying efforts in an environment of uncertainty (Heinz et al., 1993, p. 370). As a result, most interest groups focused their lobbying efforts on short-term policy goals that often resulted in no significant change to the policy subsystem (Heinz et al., 1993, p. 412). Overall, the third era is best remembered for works that either stressed the diffuse, immeasurable nature of the policy process (Heclo, 1978), or works that questioned if the notion of traditional regulatory studies on the policy process was even accurate (Wilson, 1980). Research in the third era tended to invalidate the numerous case studies used in the second era. But, it's also important to note that researchers during this era described what they saw. By the 1970s and 1980s the number of active interest groups lobbying policymaking bodies exploded in the United States (Petracca, 1992, p. 13). This made interest group research difficult and led many researchers to lean toward a more diffuse explanation of the policy process. Unfortunately, this more diffuse explanation was harder to quantitatively validate. As a result, in the fourth era, lasting from the late 1980s to the present, researchers developed various policy models that tried to theoretically explain the more diffuse policy process that became accepted in the 1970s. During this period, the focus shifted to the development of policy theories or models that could better explain the policy process observed in the 1970s and 1980s. Political scientists developed theories such as the ACF model, the PE model, and John Kingdon's streams metaphor for policymaking to explain the policy process (Baumgartner & Jones, 1993; Kingdon, 1995; Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1993). Research during this era incorporated many aspects of the traditional interest group literature. For example, the ACF examined the policy beliefs of interest groups and other entities in one policy subsystem over an extended time frame. In this way, this type of research methodology mirrored the attempts of researchers in the second and third eras to examine the influence of interest groups on the policymaking process. However, in the fourth era more researchers attempted to theoretically validate their findings through policy models. While these theoretical models of the policy process took much from previous research that examined interest group influence on the policy process, they also took from previous research on systems analysis. Starting in the 1960s and 1970s, political scientists started to use systems analysis to better understand and theoretically model the policy process. The genesis of such attempts occurred with David Easton's (1965) black box systems model of policymaking that constructed an input/output schemata to policy development. This type of approach helped to introduce the concept of systems analysis into political science and helped to form later models of the policy process such as the ACF. Easton (1965) argued that the policy process is a political system of inputs and outputs mediated by the structure of government, social forces, political factors, and economic conditions (p. 32-33). Inputs such as elections, public opinions, and media coverage enter the black box of the political system where they are transformed into policy outputs such as laws, regulations, and policy decisions (Easton, 1965, p. 32-33; see also Birkland, 2005, p. 202). These outputs can then influence the political system or the inputs to the political system through a feedback loop. Easton provided a good, general theoretical model of the policy process that influenced political science well into the 1980s. The genius of Easton's approach resided in the emphasis on the policy process. Rather than focusing on a specific institution involved in the policy process, Easton focused on the policy system as a whole. As a result, the black box systems model did not just look at a specific institution such as Congress, the presidency, the judicial system, a specific executive agency, or specific interest groups. Instead, this type of analysis examined a policy process that could include many state, local, and federal agencies; different appropriations and oversight committees in Congress; court decisions from state courts and federal courts; and various interest groups operating at multiple levels of government (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1993, p. 2). This provided political science with a more realistic description of the policy process. However, there was a weakness in most studies using systems analysis to examine the policy process. These studies usually did not attempt to systematically examine the inner workings of the black box (Birkland, 2005, p. 223-224). Or, in other words, systems analysis did not try to hypothesize about the interaction of governmental structure, social forces, political factors, and economic conditions on a specific policy subsystem consisting of various policy actors. That line of analysis was left for ACF scholars. Building from the systems approach to policy analysis as well as research that examined the influence of interest groups on the policy process, Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith developed the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) in the late 1980s. The ACF emphasized the role of beliefs on policy development and policy change within a specific policy subsystem. However, unlike other policy models, the ACF integrated the socioeconomic and political forces that could impact the influence tactics of interest groups and other organized entities into its theoretical construct. Therefore, the ACF opened the black box of political systems and served as an important bridge linking the research of traditional interest group theorists with theorists of the policy process such as David Easton. The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) is a theoretical model of the policy process emphasizing the role of policy beliefs and coalitions of advocacy groups on policy change. The ACF allows scholars to determine how various coalitions influence public policy within a particular policy subsystem as well as how those coalitions respond to dynamic changes impacting the policy environment (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1999, p. 123, 145, 149). The framework hypothesizes that stable parameters (such as basic problem attributes, natural resource distributions, cultural values, and governmental structure) interact with dynamic parameters (such as economic conditions, public support of governmental leaders, and outcomes from other policies) outside a specific policy environment to influence the actions of various advocacy coalitions within a specific policy environment (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1999, p. 149). In the framework, the policy beliefs of diverse policy actors such as advocacy groups, governmental agencies, private organizations, political leaders, and other entities coalesce around a set of policy core beliefs (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1999, p. 131). These coalitions then try to influence governmental authorities, given resource constraints and the interaction of external events (the stable and changing parameters discussed above), by using certain guidance instruments (such as lobbying, actual political support during elections, media manipulation, and even demonstrations) (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1999, p. 142). The ultimate goal of these influence tactics is a policy change that favorably aligns a new policy output with their policy beliefs. Policy beliefs constantly adapt to changing socioeconomic conditions and political factors. The ACF emphasizes the role of bounded rationality and the ability of individuals within advocacy coalitions to effectively process new policy information, current socioeconomic trends, and relevant political information (Jenkins-Smith & Sabatier, 1993, p. 44; Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1999, p. 13 1). Once processed, the information becomes integrated into the existing policy beliefs of an advocacy coalition as new policy beliefs. Advocacy coalitions can then communicate these new beliefs to other groups, policymakers, the public, or even to other advocacy coalitions. The ACF classifies this type of response to changing conditions as policy oriented learning. In policy-oriented learning, advocacy coalitions change their policy beliefs to incorporate current conditions impacting the policy subsystem in which they operate. Conditions that impact a policy subsystem can range from the socioeconomic and political impacts discussed above to feedback information from previous policy changes to policy interactions from other advocacy coalitions (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 199, p. 149). Coalitions readjust their policy beliefs in light of these conditions. This results in a long-lasting alteration to an advocacy coalition's policy beliefs (Jenkins-Smith & Sabatier, 1993, p. 42; Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1999, p. 122). Whether policy beliefs change or whether they stay the same, it is important to note that the ACF model stipulates that not all policy beliefs are created equally. According to the ACF model, there are three types of beliefs within an advocacy coalition: deep core beliefs, policy core beliefs, and secondary beliefs (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1 999, p. 12 1 - 122). Deep core beliefs are broad, guiding beliefs that influence an advocacy coalition across policy subsystems. An example of such deep core beliefs could include the conservative versus progressive (liberal) belief debate. Policy core beliefs are more specific beliefs that unite groups into advocacy coalitions and usually only apply to a particular policy subsystem. An example of policy core beliefs in pesticide regulations could include an "agriculture promotion" coalition that believes in reducing pesticide regulations in order to reduce economic burdens on farmers and agri-businesses, and a "consumer-environmental protection" coalition that believes in increasing pesticide regulations in order to improve the environment and human health. Finally, secondary beliefs are very specific beliefs that apply to a specific part of a policy or policy subsystem. Examples of secondary beliefs are policy preferences such as the belief that a certain division of an agency should be funded at a higher level than another division of the same agency. These differences in policy beliefs are very important to consider in any ACF analysis. According to the ACF model, policy beliefs are either broad or specific. In general, more specific policy beliefs enable advocacy groups to recruit new members and organize around key concepts. These types of beliefs often serve as the bond that holds an advocacy group together. These types of beliefs are also visibly communicated to policymakers in legislative hearings, direct lobbying efforts, and other communication pathways. In contrast, broader policy beliefs are often implied by the advocacy group and may only be explicitly stated in mission statements. These types of beliefs are usually not visibly stated by the advocacy group in legislative hearings, direct lobbying efforts, or other communication pathways. Most ACF analyses focus on secondary beliefs since these beliefs are the ones most likely to change over time (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1999). Secondary beliefs are also where conflict occurs. With secondary policy beliefs, groups within an advocacy coalition can disagree about a specific part of a proposed policy, while agreeing on the broader need for such a policy. Or, different advocacy coalitions can disagree about both the specific parts of a proposed policy as well as the broader need for such a policy. However, these conflicts over policy are usually short lived. Due to changing socioeconomic conditions and political factors, one coalition will usually move toward the secondary policy beliefs of an opposing coalition over time in a policy-oriented learning manner (Sabatier & Brasher, 1993, p. 203). In especially intense and long lasting conflicts, policy brokers can also operate within the policy subsystem. These actors try to resolve differences between the competing coalitions in a way that influences governmental authorities toward certain policy decisions (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1999, p. 122). Policy brokers can range from respected policymakers to respected members of an advocacy group. Wherever they originate, they must hold the respect of all of the actors in the policy subsystem in order to successfully resolve a policy conflict. Through the 1990s the ACF model gained prominence as a way for scholars to analyze policy beliefs and policy change within a specific policy subsystem. Scholars using the ACF in this time period typically analyzed data from public hearings in a case study approach that either quantitatively or qualitatively validated the framework's numerous hypotheses concerning advocacy coalitions, policy change, and policy learning (for a qualitative approach see Barke, 1993; Brown & Stewart, 1993; Ellison, 1998; Mawhinney, 1993; Munro, 1993; Weible, Sabatier, & Lubell, 2004; for the more quantitative approach see Jenkins-Smith & St. Clair, 1993; Sabatier and Brasher, 1993; Weible & Sabatier, 2005). These research efforts allowed political scientists to examine if the policy beliefs of advocacy groups within advocacy coalitions changed and why public policy changed at a certain time. However, even though use of the ACF model in research has become standard and accepted within political science, it still has three contentious concepts. First, the ACF theorizes that advocacy groups and other interested entities can unknowingly coalesce into advocacy coalitions. In some circumstances, these groups do not willingly engage other groups in the formation of an advocacy coalition. For example, the Sierra Club may not routinely enter into discussions with other environmental groups on the formation of a large environmental advocacy coalition for a specific pesticide regulatory issue. Although advocacy groups often join forces in support of specific legislation or to bring publicity to specific issues, the use of advocacy coalitions within the ACF model is more of an aggregation tool for researchers. By using policy beliefs to aggregate similar advocacy groups into advocacy coalitions, researchers can learn more about the policy process and if the members of one coalition are moving towards the beliefs of an opposing coalition. Second, the ACF is a framework of related hypotheses and not a definitive theoretical construct. Currently, the ACF has fifteen different hypotheses concerning advocacy coalitions, policy change, and policy learning (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1999, p. 124, 129, 134, 139, 140, 145). As a result, researchers can use the ACF to examine a wide variety of traditional research problems in policy analyses, collective action studies, agenda-setting research, and even cognitive decision-making investigations. Indeed, the two major works on the ACF model by Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith reveal a broad framework in which it is hard to capture distinct insights on the policy process other than the facts that distinct advocacy coalitions exist in a policy subsystem, policy-oriented learning occurs in these coalitions, and exogenous political and socioeconomic forces significantly impact the policy process and the belief structure of advocacy coalition (Jenkins-Smith & Sabatier, 1993; Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1999). As a result, detractors often note that the ACF model is too vague, has too many hypotheses, and attempts to explain too much. Nonetheless, effective ACF research can still occur as long as the researcher narrows the topic area of ACF research. For the third contentious concept, the ACF model explains policy belief change within advocacy coalitions as a policy-oriented learning process whereby the policy beliefs of one coalition undergo an enduring change due to socioeconomic conditions, political forces, and information processing parameters (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1999, p. 123). Indeed, sudden socioeconomic or political shocks to the policy subsystem will lead to changes in policy beliefs and policy change. In response to external shocks, even if they are sudden, advocacy coalitions learn and re-adjust their policy beliefs to the new reality affecting their policy subsystem. This type of change among advocacy coalitions allows individual members of an advocacy coalition, or even an entire advocacy coalition, to move closer toward the policy beliefs of an opposing advocacy coalition due to changing socioeconomic and political conditions. As a result, the process of change for an advocacy coalition's policy beliefs as theorized in the ACF is one of constant readjustment in response to socioeconomic and political forces. The concept of policy beliefs notably distinguishes the ACF from other models of the policy process such as punctuated equilibrium (PE). While the ACF model embraces the notion of policy beliefs and its role on policy change, researchers using the PE model usually just look at the process of policy change. Read More