Cross-Fertilising the ACF with the IRR for a better understanding of Sustainable Natural Resource Management

Until now, the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) has largely focused on the sub-system and on theories relating to advocacy coalitions, policy learning and policy change. Contextual factors, especially the relatively stable parameters, have been less developed. We argue for a new way of analysing this variable and its interplay with the sub-system by developing the cross-institutional conceptual capacity of the ACF and fertilising it with the Institutional Resource Regime framework (IRR) (Gerber et al. 2009). On one hand, the IRR can demonstrate how external factors to the sub-system structure the actors’ interactions as constraints and opportunities. It is especially adequate in putting forward the importance of property rights in policy processes but also in showing how interaction between public policies/property rights is more or less coherent and can substantially explain conflict between different coalitions. An additional concept linked to the IRR, Local Regulatory Arrangements (LRA), enables us to understand how rules are implemented in different locales through specific arrangements between relevant actors. On the other hand, the ACF can help explain the dynamics and content of a regime during its lifespan (emergence, implementation and change), the actors’ objectives and strategies during its implementation in specific locales and the content of LRAs. The IRR, ACF and LRA thus enable us to link the analysis of institutions, public policy processes and the concrete applications of strategic action by advocacy coalitions. As to ground this theoretical contribution in empirical examples, we will refer to land use, climate, wind power and unconventional gas regulation policies in Switzerland and show how this new framework can be comparatively applied in different policy domains.