Actor and Coalition Strategies in the ACF: Inside vs. Outside Lobbying

While traditional ACF studies analyze the belief systems and patterns of cooperation between actors in coalitions, this paper studies influence strategies of actors belonging to different coalitions in a policy subsystem. The analysis departs from the assumption that not all actors in different coalitions within a policy subsystem are equally influential with respect to the policy output. Rather, the ability to actually influence policies also depends on actors’ influence strategies. The goal of the proposed paper is to understand why actors chose given activities and strategies of influence. To do so, we rely on the interest group and social movement literatures and distinguish inside from outside lobbying strategies. Whereas strategies of inside lobbying typically include participation in policy process venues and creating relations of information exchange with other actors, a key aspect of outside lobbying strategies are activities directed at the media and the general public. First, we ask whether actors pursue both inside and outside strategies as alternative or complementary strategies. We thus analyze whether (given types of) actors compensate their lack of institutional access with outside strategies, or whether (given types of) actors rely on both strategies. Second, we ask why actors use one or the other type of influence strategies. We expect that actors’ influence strategies in terms of inside and outside lobbying depend on a) the type of actor, b) it’s central or peripheral position within the coalition, c) whether the actor belongs to the majority or the minority coalition, and d) general characteristics of the subsystem. To study these questions, we compare three subnational subsystems on hydraulic fracturing in Switzerland, with different levels of issue saliency and conflict, and related media coverage. We rely on survey data on about 70 actors in three subnational cases, which we will analyze based on (cluster-corrected) regression models.