Coalitions, Science, and Belief Change

Status: Published

Weible, Christopher M. and Sabatier, Paul A.  (2009) Coalitions, Science, and Belief Change: Comparing Adversarial and Collaborative Policy Subsystems. The Policy Studies Journal, 37(2)

Christopher M. Weible and Paul A. Sabatier from the University of Colorado Denver found that collaborative approaches:  (and I quote from Page: 1)

• will mitigate conflict

• help integrate science and values

• policy subsystems are associated with convergence in some beliefs between rival coalitions

• policy participants are no more likely to rely on science-based, empirical beliefs in collaborative than in adversarial policy subsystems.

Weible and Sabatier "use the advocacy coalition framework (ACF; Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1993; Sabatier & Weible, 2007) to compare adversarial and collaborative policy subsystems concerning (i) convergence in beliefs regarding both water quality problems and Comments from page 1 continued on next page agreement with policy proposals; and (ii) the relative use of empirical versus normative beliefs in supporting policy proposals."  Thus they Conclude (clipped directly from Page: 14)

• This long-term shift toward science suggests learning has occurred in the Basin and supports Weiss’s (1977) enlightenment function that science slowly accumulates like sedimentation in the minds of decision makers.

• Changes in beliefs, for example, might not result from the emergence of a collaborative subsystem but rather from turnover in policy participants or to other unknown factors. [$$$ is my personal experience].

• Political events in the Basin, however, show the same trends found across many environmental policy subsystems: a shift from adversarial processes … to collaborative processes.

• Analysis finds that in a collaborative policy subsystem some beliefs converge between coalitions, suggesting the mitigation of conflict to more intermediate levels.

Sabatier Paul A., and Hank Jenkins-Smith, eds. (1993) Policy Change and Learning: An Advocacy Coalition Approach. (Boulder, Co: Westview, 1993), 290pp.

Sabatier Paul A., and Christopher M. Weible. (2007) The Advocacy Coalition Framework: Innovations and Clarifications. In Theories of the Policy Process, 2nd edn, ed. Paul A. Sabatier. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 189–220.

Weiss, Carol. (1977) Research for Policy’s Sake: The Enlightenment Function of Social Research. Policy Analysis 3 (Fall): 531–45.

weavers leadership web
Author: (c) June 17, 2011 2:04 AM Eric Weaver