Divisive Beliefs Drive Coalition Formation: Evidence from Climate Policy Networks in Eleven Countries

The Advocacy Coalition Framework is a frequently used framework to study policy processes. One of the main hypotheses of the framework is that policy actors within an advocacy coalition show substantial consensus on policy core beliefs. However, previous results in relation to this hypothesis are mixed and only partially confirmed. Previous inconsistent findings may result from the various ways empirical applications of the framework have identified and measured belief systems. Some studies have defined policy core beliefs as normative and empirical policy beliefs, while others have used policy instruments to measure policy core beliefs. In this paper we propose an inductive way of identifying the policy core as the divisive beliefs in the policy subsystem. Since coalitions are supposed to disagree over policy core beliefs, we argue that beliefs that all actors in the policy domain agree upon should not be relevant in coalition formation. We study the relationship between belief similarity and organizational collaboration in climate policy networks of eleven industrialized countries around the world using exponential random graph models. Results show that in most cases belief similarity on inductively identified divisive beliefs is a stronger predictor of collaboration compared to normative and empirical policy beliefs or policy instruments. These results give support to Advocacy Coalition Framework but indicate that more attention should be paid to the context when defining policy core beliefs