Explaining Advocacy Coalition Change with Policy Feedback

Despite the prominence of exogenous factors in theories of policy change, the precise mechanisms that link such factors to policy change remain elusive: The effects of exogenous factors on the politics underlying policy change are not sufficiently conceptualized and empirically analyzed. To address this gap, we propose to distinguish between truly exogenous factors and policy outcomes to better understand policy change. Specifically, we combine the Advocacy Coalition Framework with policy feedback theory to conceptualize a complete feedback loop among policy, policy outcomes, and subsequent politics. Aiming at theory-building, we use policy feedback mechanisms to explain why advocacy coalitions change over time. Empirically, we conduct a longitudinal single case study on policy-induced technological change in the German energy subsystem, an extreme case of policy outcomes, from 1983 to 2013. First, using discourse network analysis, we identify four patterns of actor movements, explaining coalition decline and growth. Second, using process tracing, we detect four policy feedback mechanisms explaining these four actor movements. With this inductive mixed-methods approach, we build a conceptual framework in which policy outcomes affect subsequent politics through feedback mechanisms. We develop propositions on how coalition change and feedback mechanisms explain four ideal-typical trajectories of policy change.     

Contiguity and Similarity as Poetic Modes in Some Poems of Gongora

This article explores how different authors who suffered the violence of the 1970s and 1980s revolutionary movements and military dictatorships in the Southern Cone countries of Latin America look back from a post-dictatorship present to write the history of their recent past. Nostalgia and critical reflection join forces to recreate the feelings of loss of individuals whose identities crashed due to the failure of political projects that once were conceived as messianic, as well as to critically reclaim the past in order to construct alternative futures for themselves as individuals and for the community. The article focuses mainly on the Chilean Diamela Eltit's novel Jamás el fuego nunca (2007), in which an old couple of former revolutionary militants of the Left imprisoned in a claustrophobic space—an old bed—explore their past as militants and as a couple to understand and question notions of individual and collective identity in the aftermath of traumatic and tumultuous experiences. The novel is read in the context of other narratives such as Chilean Luz Arce's testimonial, El infierno (1993) and Argentine political scientist Pilar Calveiro's essays, Poder y desaparición (1998) and Política y/o violencia (2005), among others. This article's theoretical contribution lies in its emphasis on the ethical consideration of listening to all of the narratives that speak to us about that era cognizant of their differing motivations, desires, tonalities, and subjective trajectories. Only by paying close attention to the polyphony of voices and documents about the past—especially those that speak to us from a time of subjective crisis and trauma—can we achieve a true sense of historicity.     

Sharpening Advocacy Coalitions

The concept of “advocacy coalitions” is the bedrock of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), one of the most established and successful approaches for understanding policy processes across the globe. This article revisits and sharpens the conceptual definition of advocacy coalitions. We summarize the lessons from its theoretical emphases under the ACF and specify its five attributes (policy actors, shared beliefs, coordination, resources, and stability). Through this specification, we identify the ideal coalition type and several coalition subtypes. We then clarify and make a distinction between how we think about coalitions as a concept and how we approach coalitions empirically. This article sharpens the lens for describing and explaining coalitions toward better observations, theorizing, and measurements. It ends with next steps for further deepening and broadening knowledge about advocacy coalitions.