Advocacy Coalitions and Policy Change in Africa

The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), a theoretical framework originally formulated to study US public policy, has been widely applied to western countries and has advanced policy process scholarship over the past three decades. However, there are far fewer systematic efforts to apply the Framework’s theories in Africa compared to western contexts. This result lessens the contribution of African insights into policy process scholarship and hampers the production of generalizable knowledge.

To address this empirical gap, Advocacy Coalitions and Policy Change in Africa poses and answers two interrelated research questions: what are the characteristics of advocacy coalitions, and, if appropriate, what are the explanations of policy change? These questions are explored across eight empirical, data-driven case studies in different policy domains across the continent’s five regions: North Africa, West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa, and focus on diverse policy areas, including food and nutrition, oil and gas, and climate change. Using original data collected from various sources and analyzed with a variety of techniques, this book evaluates the ACF’s theoretical predictions about coalition formation and policy change. It also explores the challenges of applying the ACF in Africa, such as incorporating the role of ethnic, cultural, and tribal identities in coalition formation, taking a broad perspective on political organizations, and improving theories of nascent subsystems. In doing so, Advocacy Coalitions and Policy Change in Africa elucidates the key characteristics of advocacy coalitions and plausible explanations of policy change.

Oxford Studies in African Politics and International Relations is a series for scholars and students working on African politics and International Relations and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on contemporary developments in African political science, political economy, and International Relations, such as electoral politics, democratization, decentralization, gender and political representation, the political impact of natural resources, the dynamics and consequences of conflict, comparative political thought, and the nature of the continent’s engagement with the East and West. Comparative and mixed methods work is particularly encouraged. Case studies are welcomed but should demonstrate the broader theoretical and empirical implications of the study and its wider relevance to contemporary debates. The focus of the series is on sub-Saharan Africa, although proposals that explain how the region engages with North Africa and other parts of the world are of interest.

Series Editors: Nic Cheeseman (University of Birmingham), Peace Medie (University of Bristol), and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira (Sciences Po, Paris).

Alex Osei-Kojo is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Political Science and Affiliate at the Center for Energy, Transportation, and Environmental Policy (CETEP) in the Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Osei-Kojo studies energy and environmental policy in Africa, using the Advocacy Coalition Framework and other policy process theories. He has published articles in several respected outlets including Review of Policy Research, Resources Policy, Public Administration Review, Policy & Politics, and German Political Science Quarterly. Formerly, he taught public policy and public administration at the University of Ghana. He also worked as a research fellow at the Institute for Democratic Governance, a think tank focused on advancing democratic governance in Africa.

Christopher M. Weible is University of Colorado Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado Denver and Guest Professor at the Luleå University of Technology. Weible studies politics and policy in contentious environmental issues and dozens of article publications using the Advocacy Coalition Framework. In 2016, he co-edited a seven-country comparison of oil and gas development based on the Advocacy Coalition Framework entitled Policy Debates on Hydraulic Fracturing: Comparing Coalition Politics in North America and Europe. He co-edited, with Samuel Workman, the new Methods of the Policy Process and edited the fifth edition of Theories of the Policy Process. He also currently serves as the co-editor for Policy & Politics and co-director of the Center for Policy and Democracy and holds an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy from Luleå University of Technology in Sweden.