Advocacy Coalitions, Institutional Contexts and Political Economy: Comparing Climate Change Policy Domains in 14 Countries

The Advocacy coalition framework argues that coalitions come about as a result of belief homophily: organizations seek other organizations with similar policy core beliefs. The ACF was originally developed in the United States, where a two-party political system with pluralist institutions often results in clear demarcation lines between political opponents. Subsequently, the ACF has also been used in a variety of political and economic contexts, including multi-party and corporatist systems in Europe and some non-Western contexts. However, comparative work to systematically examine the relationship between national institutional contexts and coalition dynamics is just emerging. We compare climate change policy domains across 14 countries characterized by varying institutional contexts. Using a unique data set of network surveys in these countries (N=1400) we test hypotheses drawn from three competing but interrelated theory traditions. The first is that of the ACF itself, which focuses on the role of belief homophily in coalition formation. The second argues that coalitions are shaped by the political opportunity structures of a State. For example, in a pluralist political system, there is likely to be at least two opposing coalitions, which are clearly identifiable by the presence of shared beliefs within-coalition and their coordinated behaviour. The third theoretical tradition suggests that the political economy of a State is more significant than the institutional context. For example, in an economy heavily dependent on the oil industry it is likely that the climate change policy domain will include a dominant coalition consisting of actors that share the beliefs of the representatives of this industry. Our preliminary results show that both political institutions and the political economy are important variables for ACF explanations. Corporatist and consensual countries, as well as those less dependent on fossil fuel industries, tend to have less clearly demarcated coalition structures.