Green Transition of Iron Cities: A Comparative Case Study of Kitakyushu and Pohang

This comparative case study explores why two cities similar in socio-economic factors diverge in their pathways to environmental improvement. Our research looks at the changing local economies and environmental pollution problems facing Kitakyushu in Japan and Pohang in South Korea. Both cities drove their nations’ rapid economic growth as the main heavy industry hubs but have performed radically differently vis-à-vis public demands for environmental improvement despite sharing much in common. Employing the advocacy coalition framework as a main analytical tool, we examine the unfolding of policy efforts to turn a manufacturing-oriented industrial city into a “greener” city responding to environmental objectives and the respective outcomes. The research reveals that variations in regulatory decentralization, external events and coalition opportunity structures largely explain the observed discrepancy in green transition between the two settings. Our findings contribute to expanding scarce case study literature illustrating the mechanisms that can underpin environmental improvements in cities that have served as the location of heavy industries and offer suggestions for advancing them.

Paradoxes of Ratification: The Nagoya Protocol and Brazilian State Transformations

This article explores the paradoxical behaviour of Brazil in relation to its national and international approaches to the regulations of access to genetic resources and benefits sharing with indigenous and other traditional communities. Brazil was one of the leaders in the international negotiations that led to the UN Nagoya Protocol but only ratified it 11 years later, after remarkable transformations of its internal biodiversity laws. We suggest that the seemingly contradictory behaviour has been shaped by the country’s internal political and ideological changes. This transformation goes hand in hand with substantial changes in state–society relations, particularly with regard to the balance of coalitions’ power between indigenous groups and industrial and agrarian elites. The article builds on the literature on state transformations and relies on the Advocacy Coalition Framework to show the importance of considering the impact of national-level politics on the fate of international agreements.

The Role of Advocacy Coalitions in Shaping the Technological Innovation Systems: The Case of the Russian Renewable Energy Policy

Many hydrocarbon-rich countries have recognized the global shift towards renewable energy sources, and Russia is not an exception. Drawing on two strands of literature—technological innovation systems and the advocacy coalition framework—we investigate the roles of actors and coalitions in shaping the Russian renewable energy policy and explore why particular renewable energy sources have progressed more than others, and what the main reasons are for their sudden development. The results show that the more successful renewable energy industries are those that were promoted by influential actors from traditional energy industries. Moreover, these actors also promoted the specific design of support schemes for renewable energy policy in Russia. We discuss the importance of policy process theories for understanding energy transition studies and provide specific policy recommendations for policy creation in the renewables industry.

Leveraging Political Resources: Applying the Advocacy Coalition Framework to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence

As politics becomes increasingly polarized, the value of collective political action becomes more visible and overt. Nonprofit organizations act collectively in pursuit of their policy goals in nearly all aspects of public policy. Understanding how nonprofits borne of social movements engage politically expands our insight into advocacy coalition behavior following seemingly effective social movements. The coalition’s leveraging of political resources provides us this insight. This study assesses the policy activities produced or maintained within a U.S. national domestic violence advocacy coalition over its lifetime to determine how and when resources were leveraged. A directed content analysis is conducted on historical data to capture the evolution of coalition activities over a 41-year period. The coalition’s emphasis on policy change waned over time as it achieved its policy goals. The coalition then leaned on its largest resources, mobilizable troops, and information to increasingly emphasize policy implementation and evaluation. These findings indicate that when in the policy process coalitions leverage their political resources may be more important than how coalitions leverage resources. Framing nonprofit political activity across the stages of the policy process can open doors to better use of scarce political resources.

The coalitional politics of the European Union’s environmental forest policy: Biodiversity conservation, timber legality, and climate protection

European forest policymaking is shaped by progressing European integration, yet with notable ideological divisions and diverging interests among countries. This paper focuses on the coalitional politics of key environmental forest issues: biodiversity conservation, timber legality, and climate protection policy. Combining the Advocacy Coalition Framework and the Shifting Coalition Theory, and informed by more than 186 key informant interviews and 73 policy documents spanning a 20-year timeframe, we examine the evolution of coalitional forest politics in Europe. We find that the basic line-up has remained stable: an environmental coalition supporting EU environmental forest policy integration and a forest sector coalition mostly opposing it. Still, strategic alliances across these coalitions have occurred for specific policy issues which have resulted in a gradual establishment of an EU environmental forest policy. We conclude with discussion of our findings and provide suggestions for further research.

Foreign Policy Change from an Advocacy Coalition Framework Perspective

Why does a state change its foreign policy objectives and who is responsible for instigating such change? According to Hermann, four primary change agents are central to this process: leaders, bureaucracies, changes in domestic constituencies, and external shocks. This paper argues that the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) is a complementary policy process framework that can explain foreign policy change (FPC) and that accounts for all four of these primary change agents. Additionally, it is a broader framework of the policy process that facilitates a more comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing FPC than traditional FPC research. The ACF has the potential to broaden our understanding of FPC by emphasizing the intersection of the international system with domestic politics and focusing on a myriad of policy actors coordinating their advocacy efforts to influence FPC. To support this argument, the paper discusses how FPC can benefit from the ACF and reviews past applications. It proposes a research agenda using the ACF to study FPC and draws conclusions about future challenges and directions.