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Policy Sciences
Published in: Policy Sciences 4/2017

15-11-2017 | Research Note

Plus ça Change, Plus C’est La Même Chose? A review of Paul Sabatier’s “An advocacy coalition framework of policy change and the role of policy-oriented learning therein”

Author: Adam Wellstead

Published in: Policy Sciences | Issue 4/2017

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Abstract

Paul Sabatier’s 1988 Policy Sciences paper, “An advocacy coalition framework of policy change and the role of policy-oriented learning therein” (21:129–168), introduced the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) to the policy discipline. Over the past 30 years, the ACF has become a generalizable theory of policy change. Another feature is the ongoing critical self-assessment and revisions of the framework’s theoretical and empirical assumptions. As a result, there have been many reviews of the ACF. However, the popularity of Sabatier’s contribution and the most cited article in this journal is its wider significance beyond the ACF. A bibliometric analysis of 737 peer-reviewed publications citing this paper is undertaken. This is followed by a summary chronicling ACF reviews and scholarship comparing the ACF with other policy process theories and frameworks.
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Footnotes
1
According to Jenkins-Smith et al. (2018), Sabatier submitted an ACF manuscript to Policy Sciences in 1984, but it was rejected.
 
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Metadata
Title
Plus ça Change, Plus C’est La Même Chose? A review of Paul Sabatier’s “An advocacy coalition framework of policy change and the role of policy-oriented learning therein”
Author
Adam Wellstead
Publication date
15-11-2017
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Policy Sciences / Issue 4/2017
Print ISSN: 0032-2687
Electronic ISSN: 1573-0891
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-017-9307-z

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