China’s Policy Processes and the Advocacy Coalition Framework

Abstract

This review of 81 applications of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) in China between 2006 and 2017 finds that the ACF's hypotheses about the existence and stability of competing advocacy coalitions in policy subsystems, the occurrence of change across its three-tiered belief system, and the credence of its four pathways to policy change, which have been developed and mostly tested in Western democratic contexts, can be confirmed in China's authoritarian political system and transitional context. This review also finds some unexpected results, which have implications for studying China's policy processes and for future applications of the ACF. Adopting common vocabulary and theoretical foci, ACF applications have captured some of the complexity and evolving features of policy processes in China. Applications of the ACF to China have also enriched the discussions about how authoritarian governments, through interacting with other policy actors, adapt to external changes in transitional context.