This study applies the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) to developments in Swedish nuclear energy policy in the 1970s and 80s. In an effort to contribute to the refinement and debate regarding the generalizability of ACF theory, the objective is to assess the utility of ACF assumptions when applied in this case. The study explores hypotheses about advocacy coalition stability and examines the motivations explaining policy change in the wake of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Utilizing different sources of data, the study confirms patterns of coalition stability and shows that interests and political learning were important in explaining policy change in this case. Theoretical implications derived from this study call for further specification of basic ACF concepts(external perturbations, dominant coalitions, and skillful exploitation) and posit the intensity and breadth of political conflict and strategic action as critical factors contributing to the explanation of policy change in contested policy areas.
Following dramatic changes in the international security environment, civil defence has reemerged as a central priority of governments, which requires collaboration among many stakeholders across sectors and levels of authority. Conditions for achieving such collaboration is a long-standing topic in different literatures, yet this is still a nascent topic in the study of civil defence and preparedness. In an effort to bridge these literatures, this paper proposes an interdisciplinary lens to advance insights regarding the merits and drawbacks of collaborative governance in the civil defence domain. We discuss how sector-specific developments, as well as more general societal changes towards complexity, interdependency, and institutional fragmentation, have resulted in increased pressure on collaborative solutions. We elaborate on four theoretical conjectures focusing on determinants, diminishing returns, institutional fit, and top-down dynamics. We end with suggestions for methodological innovations, including ways to collect and analyze data about collaboration and its outcomes.
Effective interorganizational collaboration is a pivotal ingredient of any community or nation’s capacity to prepare for and bounce back from disruptive crisis events. The booming research field of collaborative public management (CPM) has been yielding important insights into such collaboration that as yet await transfer to the study of crisis management (CM). Also, we argue that the general CPM literature has not sufficiently addressed the distinctive collaboration challenges involved in coping with crises. This article bridges this twofold gap. Based on a systematic review of prior research in collaborative CM, this study identifies dominant areas of theoretical emphasis, methodological practices, and patterns of empirical enquiry. The article highlights areas where CPM research has potential to further inform the understanding of collaborative CM, including performance, success factors, managerial skills, and learning. The article then identifies five properties associated with CM—uncertainty, leadership, magnitude, costs, and urgency—which deserve further analysis to advance the understanding of the application of CPM principles and strategies. We conclude with outlining a research agenda and offering a set of testable propositions aimed at investigating the likelihood of effective collaboration in different types of crises and as expected indifferent CM paradigms.
What mechanisms link external events to policy change in a policy subsystem? Thispaper responds to this question by offering a nuanced re-conceptualization ofexternal events and by identifying the mechanisms that link disruptive crises topolicy change. Building from the tenets of the advocacy coalition framework and asynthesis of the crisis management and policy change literatures, this paper (1)introduces the concept of policy and geographical proximity as a means to showhow different types of crises alter the incentives for policy action within policysubsystems; (2) discusses an integrated set of proposals on how geographical andpolicy proximity affects the prospects of change in a policy subsystem; and (3)presents hypothesized scenarios outlining plausible intervening pathways linking acrisis to changes as contingent on policy subsystem structures.