Explaining Advocacy Coalition Change with Policy Feedback

TLDR

Policy change theories emphasize exogenous factors, yet the mechanisms linking these factors to political outcomes remain poorly conceptualized and empirically underexplored. The study aims to clarify policy change by distinguishing exogenous factors from policy outcomes and integrating the Advocacy Coalition Framework with policy feedback theory to explain coalition dynamics. We conduct a longitudinal case study of German energy policy (1983‑2013), using discourse network analysis and process tracing to identify four actor movement patterns and four feedback mechanisms that link policy outcomes to subsequent politics. The analysis yields a conceptual framework and propositions showing that policy outcomes drive coalition change via feedback mechanisms, producing four ideal‑typical trajectories of policy change.

Abstract

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.