Advocacy Coalitions and Collaborative Management

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Advocacy Coalitionsand Collaborative Management

• ENVS 4002
• February 2, 2005
• Shawn Dalton, Ph. D.

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Review

• Environmental problem
• Stakeholder
• Solution
• Barriers to participation
• UNB woodlot example is there an existing or
  potential environmental problem?

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Textbook approach to policy analysis

• Problem identification
• Agenda setting
• Adoption
• Implementation
• Policy evaluation

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Shortfalls of Textbook Approach

• Not causal model (cant predict process)
• No basis for empirical hypothesis testing
• Descriptive inadequacy (policy process is
  non-linear)
• Legalistic, top-down focus (policy often driven
  by local, bottom-up process)
• Policy cycle is temporal unit of analysis
• Does not account for policy-oriented learning
• Does not evaluate effectiveness of policy clean
  air, clean water, social justice, e.g.

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Alternative Advocacy Coalition Framework (3
components)

• Advocacy coalition actors from a variety of
  public and private institutions at all levels of
  government who share a set of basic beliefs, and
  who seek to manipulate the rules, budgets, and
  personnel of governmental institutions in order
  to achieve these goals over time

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• External Changes Changes external to the
  subsystem in socioeconomic conditions,
  system-wide governing coalitions, and output from
  other subsystems that provide opportunities and
  obstacles to the competing coalitions

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• Stable system parameters those parameters, such
  as social structure and constitutional rules,
  that place constraints and resources on the
  various subsystem actors

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Premises

• Understanding policy change requires a time
  perspective of at least a decade
• Focus on policy subsystems most useful approach
• Must include intergovernmental dimension
• Public policies can be conceptualized as belief
  systems

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Understanding policy change requires a time
perspective of at least a decade

• Initial successes sometimes fizzle
• What appear to be failures initially can be
  enduring successes over time
• Need enough time to determine whether policy has
  desired effects, plus identify collateral
  benefits/damage

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Focus on policy subsystems most useful approach

• Policy subsystem those actors from a variety of
  public and private organizations who are actively
  concerned with a policy problem or issue

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Must include intergovernmental dimension

• Interactions among all levels of government must
  be evaluated in order to understand or interpret
  fate of policy frameworks

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Belief Systems

• Public policies can be conceptualized as belief
  systems
• Deep core (fundamental normative)
  non-negotiable
• Core (fundamental policy positions concerning
  basic strategies for achieving deep core beliefs)
  difficult, but possible to change, given
  information/experience
• Secondary (instrumental decisions and information
  searches necessary to implement policy core)
  moderately easy to change

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ACF Applications in Collaborative Resource
Management?

• Policy-oriented learning in collaboration
• Shared vocabulary
• Science as common language???
• Collaborative initiatives require
• Shared control and decision-making
• Innovation and creativity
• Respect for others core beliefs
• Building common vocabulary and culture
• Mechanisms for dealing with conflict

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Collaborative Management

• Why collaborate?
• Critical to ecosystem management approach,
  landscapes are fragmented geographically,
  politically, and by ownership
• Part of life in a diverse society
• Can produce better decisions than adversarial
  approaches
• Improves chances of implementation

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Key Lessons

• Focus on the problem
• Partnerships are people
• Entrepreneurial approach