The European Union in Crises: an Advocacy Coalition Framework Perspective

Throughout the last decades, EU asylum policy has undergone continuous enhancements of competences, resulting in one of the most dynamic policy areas of EU integration. Within scholarly debates, studies have focused on the analysis of EU asylum policy referring to theories of EU integration (neo-functionalism vs. liberal intergovernmentalism), to the institutional setting of the policy (supranational vs. intergovernmental), as well as to the transposition of the policy at the national level. Even though some scholars have engaged in bridging the fields of EU studies and public policy (as far as this specific policy area is concerned) by applying the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) to analyse the development of specific legal provisions (Ripoll Servent & Trauner, 2014), still a big gap exists related to the interconnection of public policy and refugee studies (El-Taliawi et al., 2021). This paper strives to start filling this gap from a theoretical perspective. Due to the complexity of EU policymaking, the ACF is considered to be the most suitable policy process framework in order to analyse EU asylum policy process as well as policy change. Therefore, the present paper critically engages with the motivations supporting this statement, by outlining the main assumptions of the framework and their adaptability to the EU as well as to EU asylum policy. Moreover, with the objective of accounting for the multiple crises faced by the EU – in general –, and by EU asylum policy subsystem – in particular – the paper draws on the crisis approach literature. More specifically, the paper integrates the ACF with the theorisation of creeping crisis, in order to thoroughly consider the effects that crises may have on policy change. Fulfilling such task, would not only lead to an array of assumptions specifically relating the ACF to EU policymaking, but also to a set of hypotheses to be empirically tested. Notwithstanding the fact that the hypotheses will be drawn to be empirically tested on EU asylum policy, it is supposed that they may be adapted to different EU policy areas, providing the tools for a more systematic analysis of EU policy process and policy change in times of crisis.