University of Utah
A Comparison of Three Emerging Theories of the Policy Process
Author(s): Edella Schlager and William Blomquist
Source: Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 3 (Sep., 1996), pp. 651-672
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. on behalf of the University of Utah
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/449103
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FIELD ESSAY
A Comparison of Three
Emerging Theories of the Policy
Process
EDELLA SCHLAGER, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
WILLIAM BLOMQUIST, INDIANA UNIVERSITY, INDIANAPOLIS
In an earlier review of political theories of the policy process, Sabatier (1991)
challenged political scientists and policy scholars to improve theoretical
understanding of policy processes. This essay responds by comparing and
building upon three emerging theoretical frameworks: Sabatier's advocacy
coalitions framework (ACF), institutional rational choice (IRC), and Moe's
political theory of bureaucracy, which he calls the politics of structural
choice (SC). The frameworks are compared using six criteria: (1) the bound-
aries of inquiry; (2) the model of the individual; (3) the roles of information and beliefs in decision making and strategy; (4) the nature and role of
groups; (5) the concept of levels of action; and (6) the ability to explain
action at various stages of the policy process. Comparison reveals that each
framework has promising components, but each remains short of provid-
ing a full explanation of the processes of policy formation and change.
Directions for future theory development and empirical examination are
discussed.
Developing logical, empirically supported political theories of the public polic
process remains an important enterprise within political science. Many case
studies of policy making generate useful insights about elements that a politi
cal theory of the policy process must account for. Case studies, however, are
not general theoretical explanations of how political actors create, implement
and change public policies in order to advance their own purposes and re-
spond to perceived problems. Rigorous theoretical work accounts for specific
actors, such as legislators, or specific stages of the policy process, such a
agenda setting, but does not attempt to address the public policy process in
NOTE: The authors gratefully acknowledge the comments of previous readers, especially
Hank Jenkins Smith, H. Brinton Milward, Laurence O'Toole, Hal Rainey, Paul
Sabatier, John Geer and the anonymous reviewers for this journal.
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Political Research Quarterly
its entirety. Sabatier (1991) and Moe (1990a, b) encourage colleagues within
the discipline to make further progress in building theories of the policy pro-
cess. Their own work contributes to this enterprise. Sabatier and several col-
leagues fashioned the advocacy coalitions (AC) framework. Moe developed
the "politics of structural choice" (SC) as a promising basis for explaining why
public policies and organizations work as they do. Sabatier recommends attention to the institutional rational choice (IRC) approach associated with
Elinor Ostrom and colleagues at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy
Analysis. While these three approaches do not exhaust the activity in the field,
this essay focuses upon them because they represent relatively well-developed frameworks which show promise of blossoming into general political
theories of the policy process.
Like many fields within political science, that of theories of the policy process
is hard to delineate firmly because it overlaps with and draws upon several related
endeavors. Within the field, important advances include the articulation of the
stages of the policy process Oones 1977; Eyestone 1978; Anderson 1979); the
path-breaking work on agenda setting by Kingdon (1984) and Baumgartner and
Jones (1993), and the distinction among policy types and the politics surrounding them (Lowi 1964; Wilson 1980; Gormley 1983). Comparative policy research,
including comparative research involving the American states (Dye 1966;
Sharkansky 1968), has shed light on important factors in the external environment of the political system that affect policymaking and policy outcomes, but to
date comparative policy research has produced a larger number of anthropological, sociological, and economic explanations of policymaking and policy outcomes
than political ones.
The work of political scientists studying particular institutions and actors
involved in the policy process also feeds the development of political theories of
the policy process. Certainly, the development of theories of legislator behavior
(Mayhew 1974), bureaucrat behavior (Niskanen 1971), lobbyist behavior (Salisbury
1986; Rosenthal 1993), and the behavior of policy entrepreneurs (Schneider, Teske,
and Mintrom 1995) inform us that any truly political theory of the policy process
must account for the fact that political actors engage in the policy process not
only-indeed, perhaps not primarily-in order to respond to perceived social problems, but also to advance their own political interests and careers. Recent contri-
butions in the area of political control of the bureaucracy (Calvert, McCubbins,
and Weingast 1989; Macey 1992; McCubbins, Noll, and Weingast 1989; Wood
and Waterman 1991) overlap with and contribute to the development of political
theories of the policy process that would account for policy implementation and
not just policy formulation and adoption.
These connections to other fields of research in political science do not,
in our view, overshadow the importance of the enterprise of developing more
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A Comparison of Three Emerging Theories of the Policy Process
general theories of the policy process, theories that can account for the multiple facets and actors that define and motivate the policy process. An update
and overview of that field of endeavor is our purpose here. In this essay, we
offer a methodological comparison of the IRC, SC, and AC approaches. We
present a brief synopsis of each, then compare them on several important
aspects. In this comparison, the features of each approach help to highlight
the strengths and weaknesses of the other two. We conclude with suggestions
for further theory development and research.
APPROACHES TO POLICY PROCESSES
The goal of a political theory of the policy process is to explain how interested
political actors interact within political institutions to produce, implement,
evaluate, and revise public policies. The explanations offered by the three
approaches presented here proceed toward that goal from different starting
points, and overlap in places while diverging in others.
Ostrom and Institutional Rational Choice
IRC theorists conceive of public policies as institutional arrangements-rules
permitting, requiring, or forbidding actions on the part of citizens and public
officials. Policy change results from actions by rational individuals trying to
improve their circumstances by altering institutional arrangements (Bromley
1989: 252).
IRC explanations of institutional change entail some presumptions about
the individual actors and key critical characteristics of the decision situation
in which the actors behave. An adequate model of the individual actors must
specify their: (1) resources; (2) ability to process information; (3) valuation of
outcomes and actions; and (4) criteria for selecting actions (Ostrom 1990:
132; 1991b: 241). Actors' strategy choices are guided by their perceptions of
expected benefits and costs, conditioned by the decision situation.
The structure of a decision situation includes (1) institutional arrangements-rules-that define what actions are permitted, required, and forbidden;
(2) attributes of the physical world being acted upon; and (3) characteristics
of the community within which action is proceeding. Since in most cases,
actors cannot readily change the characteristics of the community or the relevant attributes of the world, they direct their efforts to realize their prefer-
ences and improve their situations at changing institutional arrangements.
Thus, IRC defines policy change in terms of actions taken to change insti-
tutional arrangements within a decision situation that is partially shaped by
institutional arrangements. The IRC framework addresses this apparent circularity with the concept of levels of action. Actors operate within rules, but
may also be able to establish and modify rules. Actions taken within the existing
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Political Research Quarterly
rule set are regarded as one level of action; actions taken to modify the rule set
are regarded as another level of action. Actions of the latter type represent
"institutional change, as contrasted to action within institutional constraints"
(Ostrom 1991a: 8).
There are three levels of action: (1) operational, having to do with the
direct actions of individuals in relating to each other and the physical world;
(2) collective-choice, the level at which individuals establish the rules that
govern their operational-level actions; and (3) constitutional, the level at which
individuals establish the rules and procedures for taking authoritative collective decisions. The same actor or actors may move between levels of action.
Much of the time, actors seek their best outcomes within a given set of rules.
At other times, actors try to change the rules in ways that make their preferred
outcomes more likely and dispreferred outcomes less likely. IRC conceives of
policy change as actions at the collective choice and constitutional levels to
change institutional arrangements.
Ostrom advances the IRC framework to correct what she views as a shortcoming of the policy literature-the presumption that there are only two types
of institutional arrangements for resolving collective problems, markets based
on individual private property rights or state-centered public bureaucracies
(Ostrom 1990). She and others use the framework to explore the institutional
space between these two extremes: in particular, local-level, self-governing
organizations designed by users to manage common-pool resources (e.g.,
Ostrom, Gardener, and Walker 1994). Substantial empirical work based on
the IRC framework (Schlager 1990; Tang 1992; Blomquist 1992; Lam 1994)
demonstrates that common-pool resource users are not trapped in an inevitable "tragedy of the commons" from which they can be rescued only by bureaucratic control (Hardin 1968) or privatization (Welch 1983). In many
situations resource users have operated at the constitutional and collectivechoice levels to change the rules governing their use of the commons-i.e.,
they have accomplished policy change.
Moe and the Politics of Structural Choice
Moe's politics of structural choice also conceives of public policies as institutional
arrangements. He acknowledges that institutional changes can be viewed as the
results of rational individuals' efforts to overcome collective action problems and
cooperate for mutual gains (Moe 1990b: 213). Moe, however, proposes that this
mainly economic theory of institutional development should be supplemented
by a political theory that views institutional development and modification as
political processes involving conflict over power (1990a: 119).
Moe views the formation of public policies (and the organizations that
implement them) as arising from the interaction of interest groups, politi654
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A Comparison of Three Emerging Theories of the Policy Process
cians, and bureaucrats within the context of democratic politics (1990a: 131).
His "decision situation" includes a two-tiered hierarchy of political action, in
which "one tier is the internal hierarchy of the agency, the other is the political
control structure linking it to politicians and groups" (1990a: 122).
Taking for granted that the principal actors in the policy process are
groups-and setting aside the issue of group formation (1990a: 130)-Moe explores processes in which groups struggle to gain control of government in
order to achieve their preferred arrangements and policies. Because of the
political environment in which structural choice occurs, however, the resulting arrangements are not necessarily designed to be efficient or even effective.
Those who gain control of public authority-politicians and their interestgroup allies with whom they trade the use of formal decision-making authority in exchange for political support-may do so only temporarily. In a fully
developed democracy, today's winners know that they may be tomorrow's los-
ers, unable to exercise public authority (Moe 1990b: 227). Additional concerns arise from the principal-agent problem-the prospect that bureaucrats
will fail to implement or enforce designed policies while and after the group is
in control.
These considerations enter into the political calculus of those in control
of government, when they make policy by designing or modifying institutional arrangements. For instance, politicians "establish administrative agencies in ways that reduce the chance that future changes in the political landscape
will upset the terms of the original understanding among the relevant politi-
cal actors" (Macey 1992: 93). They may specify in detail how an agency will
conduct its business, leaving as little discretion as possible to bureaucrats and
future political officeholders. They may insulate the agency from sunset or
reauthorization provisions that would enhance future political oversight. These
and other tools of institutional design can shield an agency and the policies it
implements from political interference if or when the currently dominant group
loses power.
Political compromise also affects institutional design. Particularly in Ameri-
can politics, with its separation of powers and federalism, an individual or a
single interest group is almost never powerful enough alone to establish its
desired policy. Often, to gain even a portion of what it wants, those seeking
political control must engage in compromise, even with adversaries. Adversaries who gain a say in institutional design are likely to (1) impose conditions
that cripple institutions and policies they oppose, and (2) pursue rules that
open up agencies and policies to more direct political control, in anticipation
of a future return to political power (Moe 1990a: 127).
The SC framework's ironic prediction is that political actors' preoccupa-
tion with political control leads them to make or accept choices in the
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policymaking process that so divorce policy design from policy desire that
their policy goals are not achieved through the processes and structures they
adopt (Moe 1990b: 228). Direct links between institutional means and policy
ends cannot be assumed, because of the politics of structural choice.
Where do specific political actors, such as legislators, interest groups, and
the president, fit within this framework? For Moe (1990a, 1990b), the catalytic actors are organized interest groups. Organized groups are interested in,
and pay careful attention to, not only the content of policies but the structure
of the organizations that will implement the policies. Given the twin pressures of political compromise and political uncertainty, organized groups want
"bureaucracy that is highly 'bureaucratic,' buried in formal rules and requirements that undermine effectiveness and insulate against democratic control"
(Moe and Wilson 1994: 5). Will elected officials-legislators and presidents
who make structural decisions-accede to the groups' demands?
Moe suggests that legislators will be most responsive to organized inter-
ests because of their "almost paranoid concern for reelection," and because
most of the time legislators gain little by acting contrary to the demands of
organized interests (Moe and Wilson 1994: 8). Presidents, however, are another matter. Presidents face a different set of pressures, such as a national
constituency. Citizens hold them responsible for "virtually every aspect of
national performance" (Moe and Wilson 1994: 11). Consequently, presidents
want bureaucracies that are relatively effective and that they can control, not
bureaucracies insulated from democratic control. The struggle for structural
choice occurs among organized interests, their legislative supporters, and the
president, with losers in the legislative arena aligning themselves with the
president in hopes of more favorable outcomes as the executive branch implements and interprets legislative decisions. Although Moe's work remains in its
early stages, its latest installments offer the possibility of a move away from
political scientists' strong attachment to Congress as the policy actor in Ameri-
can politics, toward a more explicit inclusion of other actors such as organized groups and the president.
Sabatier and Advocacy Coalitions
Sabatier advocates an "advocacy coalition" (AC) framework that highlights
multiple major actors and other variables at work in the process of policy
change. Policy change, normally occurring over a period of a decade or more,
is viewed as a function of: (1) the interaction of competing advocacy coalitions within a policy subsystem; (2) changes external to the subsystem (e.g.,
in socioeconomic conditions); (3) the effects of relatively stable system parameters (e.g., constitutional rules, basic social structure). The policy subsystem is the unit of analysis for understanding policy change, with the other
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A Comparison of Three Emerging Theories of the Policy Process
two sets of factors constraining and affecting it. A policy subsystem consists of
actors from "public and private organizations who are actively concerned with
a policy problem" (Sabatier 1988: 131). Advocacy coalitions group the actors
within a policy subsystem. Those coalitions consist of individuals "who share
a particular belief system-i.e., a set of basic values, causal assumptions, and
problem perceptions-and who show a non-trivial degree of coordinated activity over time" (Sabatier 1988: 139). Through its broad definition of advocacy coalitions the AC framework firmly anchors itself in a pluralistic notion
of politics.
The shared belief system that defines an advocacy coalition contains "fun-
damental normative axioms," plus beliefs about policies to achieve those axioms (Sabatier 1988: 144). The belief system contains a coalition's understanding
of the connections between institutional structures and policies and their effectiveness for realizing the coalition's goals.
Members of coalitions act in concert, based on their belief systems, "to
manipulate the rules of various governmental institutions to achieve" shared
goals (Sabatier 1991: 153). Their methods of operation include: (1) developing and using information in an advocacy mode to persuade decision-makers
to adopt policy alternatives supported by the coalition; (2) manipulating the
choice of decision-making forum; and (3) supporting public officials in positions of public authority who share their views or may even be members of
the coalition.
While coalitions compete for control over public authority, typically there
is a dominant coalition and one or two minor coalitions. Major policy changes
occur in the following ways: (1) coalitions engage in compromise (often mediated by a "policy broker") to gain passage of desired policies; (2) "external
perturbations," such as changes in socioeconomic conditions, shift coalition
resources and/or perceptions of policy problems; (3) trial-and-error learning
from the adoption, implementation, and evaluation of government programs
modify belief systems; or (4) one or more coalitions' belief systems change in
an "enlightenment" episode resulting from the accumulation of policy information.
The AC framework emphasizes the role of information and learning as
motivating factors in the process of policy change. As a result, the policy pro-
cess is conceived as a continuous and "iterative process of policy formulation,
problematic implementation, and struggles over reformulation," rather than a
unidirectional progression implied by the stages heuristic (Sabatier 1988: 130).
Only core elements of the relatively large and complex AC framework
have been quantitatively tested, although numerous case studies have critically explored much of the framework (see Sabatier andJenkins-Smith 1993a).
For instance, relatively stable and longlasting coalitions opposed one another
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in airline regulation and deregulation debates, with the coalition favoring deregulation taking advantage of the opportunities provided by exogenous events,
such as record rates of inflation, to promote its preferred policies (Brown and
Stewart 1993). Access and use of professional fora, such as U.S. Senate subcommittee hearings, promoted policy learning as each side presented and
supported its position. In the process, the arguments in support of regulation
were discredited and the central policy question changed from whether deregulation should occur to how it would occur.
Quantitative tests of the AC framework, based on content analysis of tes-
timony at public hearings, support its core elements. Testimony at congres-
sional hearings on the U.S. offshore oil leasing program, and testimony at
hearings regarding land use and water quality at Lake Tahoe, support the
posited structure of belief systems, the stability and longevity of coalitions,
and the importance of exogenous events for promoting policy change (Jenkins-
Smith and St. Clair 1993; Sabatier and Brasher 1993).
Overall, the AC framework appears to be tailored to explaining policy
change over a period of decades. It emphasizes policy changes resulting from
changing preference or beliefs on the part of critical actors, as opposed to
explaining change as a consequence of the appearance of new actors with
different sets of preferences.
COMPARING THE APPROACHES
There are several differences among the theoretical frameworks. They can,
however, be compared systematically through a review based on six criteria:
(1) the boundaries of inquiry; (2) the model of the individual; (3) the roles of
information and beliefs in decision making and strategy; (4) the nature and
role of groups; (5) the concept of levels of action; and (6) the ability to explain
action at various stages of the policy process.
We believe that these criteria represent essential elements of any proposed
political theory of the policy process, and provide critical points of comparison for the three approaches discussed here. The first two criteria, boundaries
of inquiry and model of the individual, are important for highlighting methodological similarities and differences-in other words, whether and to what
extent the theoretical approaches are attempting to explain the same phenomena from the same starting point. Criteria (3), (4), and (5) all capture a particular emphasis of one of the three frameworks and examines its treatment
by the others-AC's focus on information and beliefs, Moe's use of groups as
catalytic political actors, and IRC's conception of the levels of action. The
sixth criterion returns to the frameworks' potential as political theories of the
policy process, as opposed to their ability to explicate some more limited
aspect of public policy
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A Comparison of Three Emerging Theories of the Policy Process
Table 1 encapsulates the comparison of the three approaches on those six
criteria. The narrative that follows elaborates on the comparison.
The Boundaries of Inquiry
Each theoretical approach includes boundaries of inquiry, separating endogenous elements requiring explanation from exogenous elements that are given.
The IRC approach permits the analyst to define the boundaries of inquiry, as
TABLE 1
COMPARING THE APPROACHES
Institutional
Criteria Rational Choice Structural Choice Advocacy Coalitions
Boundaries The decision Typically, a public Policy subsystem
of Inquiry stiatuation and organization plus its organized around
individuals creators, benefactors policy problems
and administrators
Model of the Intendedly but Substantively rational Procedurally rational
Individual boundedly rational maximizer seeking acting on information
problem-solver power and beliefs
Uncertainty, Actors use search and Actors' behavior Accumulation and use
Information and trial-and-error driven largely by of information a key
Beliefs learning to reduce political uncertainty, element of policy
uncertainty Beliefs Interests emphasized change. Actors'
enter in as attributes over beliefs as beliefs serve as
of the community, motivations for perceptual filters i
affecting the costs & actors' behavior their receipt of
benefits of options information, but
information can also
change beliefs
Nature and Role Groups are not central Groups are central to Coalitions, which
of Groups to IRC explanations political action, but include interest
and collective action their formation is groups, are central
barriers to group assumed rather than actors and cohere
formation emphasized explained. Groups and around beliefs.
politicians exchange Process of coalition
political support for formation is assumed
favorable policies rather than explained
Levels of Action Explicitly made part Implicitly included in Implicitly part of
of actors' coalitions' explanation; however, strategic behavior in
strategic behavior; most of the time, rules attempt to influence
policy change of the political game choice of decision
conceived as rule assumed fixed making forum
change
Stages of the Emphasis on problem Emphasis on adoption Emphasis on problem
PolicyProcess definition, policy stage definition, policy
formulation, formulation, adoption,
evaluation
evaluation
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long as the analyst specifies the required elements of the decision situation
and the model of the individual. An IRC approach could entail explaining a
decision or decisions made within an organization, between organizations, or
among multiple organizations and actors. The boundaries of the inquiry depend largely on the interests of the analyst.
The SC framework's more tightly constrained boundaries of inquiry include a public organization (in many instances an agency), and the interests
and interactions of its creators (legislators), its benefactors (interest groups),
and its administrator or executive. Policy change and policy implementation
arise from control by or compromise among one or more of these actors. Like
the AC framework, the SC framework takes the constitutional rules and the
structure of formal authority as given, as outside of the scope of inquiry.
Sabatier broadens the inquiry to include a policy subsystem. A policy
subsystem, organized around a policy problem (e.g., air pollution), includes a
potentially broader array of actors involved with that problem. The policy
subsystem concept allows the inquiry to encompass multiple public organizations, and to include additional actors such as policy analysts and journalists.
In practice, the AC framework has usually focused on a specific government
policy and the actors who coalesced around its development.
The Model of the Individual
The frameworks diverge significantly in their models of the individual actors
involved in policy processes. The AC framework is based upon a view of the
individual that is substantially different from the one employed in the SC and
IRC approaches.
The individual in the AC framework is based on Simon's notion of procedural rationality (Simon 1985: 294). The individual engages in limited search
processes, makes choices based on his or her subjective representations of the
situation, and satisfices. Analysts attempting to understand the individual's
behavior must learn about those subjective representations-an individual's
perceptions as well as his or her information resources and information-processing capability
SC's individual actor is more firmly grounded in economics-a substantively rational, self-interested individual who actively searches for best outcomes. No attention is paid to the internal belief systems of individuals, or to
how they gather, process, and synthesize information. Decisions are understood and explained entirely in terms of individuals' assumed preferences or
interests and the characteristics of the external situation.
The IRC framework, as developed and presented by Ostrom, involves
intendedly but boundedly rational individuals. These individuals are not assumed to have perfect information or infallible information-processing abili660
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A Comparison of Three Emerging Theories of the Policy Process
ties, but they are capable of learning. In most previous applications, however,
IRC explanations have employed substantive rationality-individuals understand their situations and make choices strategically to maximize utility.
Practitioners of the AC framework have devoted much of their attention
to the inner world of individuals, to the structure and content of their belief
systems (Sabatier 1988; Jenkins-Smith 1988; Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith
1993a). As an empirical enterprise, instead of assuming individuals' preferences, AC analysts develop and test empirically verifiable hypotheses concerning actors' belief systems. Furthermore, AC's attempt to account for belief
systems and how they change over time also highlights the importance of
policy learning-something that most models fail to do-elevating it to the status of a critical causal variable.
Subsuming the notion of preferences or interests into the concept of belief systems, however, raises two potentially serious shortcomings of the AC
framework. First, because belief systems of individual members of an advocacy coalition are considered homogeneous, their individual interests are con-
sidered homogeneous. In some situations, however, the interests of the
members of an advocacy coalition conflict, even while they continue to share
a core set of beliefs. These conflicts among members of an advocacy coalition
often contribute to policy change, but this is not one of the sources of policy
change identified in current explanations of the framework. By failing to account for the interests or preferences of the individual members of advocacy
coalitions, the AC framework cannot explain intra-coalition rifts caused not
by differences in policy learning but by underlying differences in interests.
In addition, without separately accounting for interests among the factors
motivating individuals, the AC framework lacks a basis for predicting or explaining strategic behavior. One is left instead to presume that individuals act
naively on the basis of their beliefs, and that they do not misrepresent their
policy preferences when attempting to attain more preferred outcomes. These
are questionable assumptions in the context of politics. Absent the notion of
strategic behavior motivated by interest, the AC framework may not be able
to account for the variety of institutional structures found in the public sector.
Using a substantively rational model of the individual, on the other hand,
Moe's SC approach offers an explanation of how particular organizational struc-
tures emerge from the political decision-making process. The SC framework
provides a crucial insight that neither the AC nor IRC approaches generateswhy institutional arrangements designed in the political arena seem poorly
suited to accomplishing their stated purposes. For AC's procedurally rational
coalition members, or IRC's intendedly rational problem-solvers, poor institutional performance is typically due to design error that is (or can be) cor-
rected by learning from information through analysis, experience, or
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experimentation. In the explicitly political world described by Moe, interest
groups, politicians, and bureaucrats respond strategically to the uncertainty
and conflict of their environment by balancing their interest in creating effec-
tive institutions with their interest in shielding their creations from potential
control by adversaries. Institutional effectiveness is therefore compromised,
not incidentally (because the individuals engaged in institutional design had
inadequate information or experience), but deliberately.
Information and Beliefs
The SC and IRC frameworks do not explicitly attend to the role of beliefs.
Ostrom argues that any model of the individual must include assumptions
about how that individual views and values the world, but there is no exploration within the IRC framework of how different belief systems affect the
calculations and strategy selections of the individual. To the extent that "beliefs" enter into the IRC framework at all, they are "attributes of the community" that affect the costs or benefits attached to choice options.
By adopting substantive rationality, the SC and IRC frameworks confine
the use of information to relatively narrow roles. Individuals with fixed prefer-
ences are treated, at least implicitly, as information sponges. They incorporate
any relevant information from any source into their decision making. For instance, Moe's interest groups, politicians, and bureaucrats do not "filter" the
information they receive from their environment through a system of beliefs
that screens some items out while accepting others readily. In both frame-
works, individuals' limited information processing capabilities explain the
selective incorporation of information in the learning and decision-making
processes, not ideological resistance.
The AC framework incorporates a much more sophisticated use of infor-
mation. For instance, coalitions may base their choice of decision-making
forums on their perception of the strength of the substantive, technical policy
information that supports their positions. A coalition will favor the highly
professionalized forum if it believes that it can prevail on the technical merits,
while a coalition with a weaker analytical case will favor a more openly political forum or the intervention of a "policy broker".
An advocacy coalition may use information as part of a socialization process, for recruiting and adding members, for reinforcing the views of existing
members, and for increasing the congruence of members' perceptions of their
goals and policy preferences. People with common understandings of their
preferred outcomes are more likely to sustain collective action than people
who do not share such understandings and must unite on commonality of
interest alone (Miller 1992).
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A Comparison of Three Emerging Theories of the Policy Process
Belief systems, as information filters, stabilize preferences. This interaction of information and beliefs is a central point of the AC framework. AC's
emphasis on values and beliefs supposes that members of an advocacy coalition will readily incorporate information into policy change while resisting or
ignoring other information. Actors in the AC framework resist or reject infor-
mation that challenges their core beliefs. Core beliefs therefore serve as "perceptual filters" through which information passes before being incorporated
into the knowledge of members of an advocacy coalition.
The AC framework incorporates the deliberate cultivation and accumulation of information within the array of coalition actions. Indeed, the "advocacy" part of the AC explanation for policy change represents the conviction
that coalitions in the policy process devote considerable resources to the development and deployment of policy information that supports their views,
and that such activities matter. Policy change in the AC framework occurs less
from the successful seizure of control than from the successful pursuit of
persuasion:
In political systems with dispersed power, [political actors] can seldom
develop a majority position through the raw exercise of power. Instead,
they must seek to convince other actors of the soundness of their position concerning the problem and the consequences of one or more policy
alternatives. (Jenkins-Smith and Sabatier 1993b: 45)
The Nature and Role of Groups
Groups, alliances, and coalitions are central political actors in the AC and SC
frameworks. On the other hand, while Ostrom notes that the "actor" in the
IRC framework may be a single individual or a group functioning as a corporate actor, IRC has not accorded a large role to group behavior.
It is especially unclear how IRC would deal with the involvement in the
policy process of alliances and coalitions, which are something short of a group
functioning as a single corporate actor. IRC theorists instead frequently emphasize collective-action barriers and the difficulty of forming and maintaining coordinated activity. In the IRC framework, the mere fact of a set of similarly
situated individuals by no means assures that they will work together.
This recognition presents a challenge to the AC and SC approaches. Each
of those frameworks include coalitions consisting of heterogeneous individuals-legislators, bureaucrats, and interest group leaders at a minimum. Yet both
frameworks simply assume coalitions among such actors exist, overlooking
problems of coordination and collective action. An individual's self-interest,
or the interests of an organization an individual represents, may not coincide
with the coalition's interest. Consequently, collective action problems must be
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Political Research Quarterly
addressed for coalitions to form. And to remain in existence, those coalitions
that do form must develop mechanisms for resolving ongoing social dilemmas that emerge within groups-such as opportunism, information asymmetries, and bargaining over the allocation of benefits produced by the group
(Miller 1992).
Understanding how potential coalition members achieve coordination is
important because institutions matter. The rules, norms, and sanctions coalition members devise to coordinate their actions almost certainly affect the
outcomes that coalitions achieve. Understanding the types of coordination
mechanisms that are adopted, how well matched those mechanisms are to the
environments in which they are used, and how effectively they bind coalition
members together should reveal much about the successes and failures of
coalitions. This area has been little studied, but is critical for explaining policy
outcomes.
Levels of Action
Of the three, the IRC framework most explicitly addresses and inc
the concept of levels of action. Policy actors act within a decision s
realize their preferences, or to advance their interests by shifting
level of action at which to change rules, including rules defining the
public authority. IRC's emphasis on levels of action brings instituti
into the realm of what is to be explained.
By contrast, the AC framework handles changes in the rules
decision situation as exogenously generated perturbations. The
work contains some implicit recognition of the levels of action con
marily in its discussion of multiple decision-making forums and the
that coalitions attempt to influence the choice of decision-making
implementing agency in ways that will advantage their side (Heintz a
Smith 1988). Sabatier (1993: 28-29) writes, "One of the basic str
any coalition is to manipulate the assignment of program responsib
that the governmental units that it controls have the most authorit
In his presentation of the "politics of structural choice" framew
(1990a: 120-21) explicitly assumed fixed rules of the political ga
the relevant period. Accordingly, the players in the SC framework
over political and administrative control without necessarily shifting
of authoritative decision making. On the other hand, in previous w
ing to political control and public organizations (e.g., 1987: 240), Mo
nizes the importance of strategic decisions taken by political actors c
whether and how to try to change the rules of the game, so a "level
conception may be compatible with the SC framework Moe present
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A Comparison of Three Emerging Theories of the Policy Process
Stages of the Policy Process
Although Sabatier (1991: 147) argues that the "stages heuristic ... has outlived its usefulness and must be replaced, in large part because it is not a
causal theory", it may still be of some use. As Jenkins-Smith and Sabatier
(1993a: 2) acknowledge, "The stages heuristic has provided a useful conceptual disaggregation of the complex and varied policy process into manageable
segments." A worthwhile political theory of the policy process should explain
activity at each stage. The stages concept retains usefulness as a measuring
stick for efforts to develop policy theories.
In its emphasis on coalition formation and institutional design, the IRC
framework focuses primarily on the problem identification, policy formula-
tion, and policy evaluation stages. Policy adoption and implementation are
problematic, but the IRC framework to date has not been used to explore
policy adoption in conflictual settings, and has restricted its analysis of imple-
mentation primarily to principal-agent problems.
Development of the SC framework so far has focused primarily on policy
adoption, at which stage implementation is "hard-wired" through structural
choice. The questions Moe has explored have been why and how policies are
made. The learning stages of the policy process-problem identification and
policy evaluation-have not received as much direct attention.
AC theorists have given most of their attention to the learning and advocacy stages of the policy process, emphasizing the role of coalitions and their
belief systems in understanding problem definition, the formulation of policy
alternatives, and feedback from prior program adoptions. The adoption stage
has been explored in terms of the multiple ways in which policy change occurs, including the attention given to the importance of decision-making fo-
rums and "policy brokers." Implementation has not been given the same
attention.
Taken individually each framework attends to multiple stages of the policy
process, although not all stages. It may even be said that each framework
seems to relate better to some stages than to others. Only when taken together
do the frameworks attend to all of the states of the policy process, and to
relationships among them.
CONCLUSION
Each of these political theories usefully moves explanations of the policy process beyond a single policy stage, or a single actor. In so doing, each contributes important pieces to the policy process puzzle. In addition, each presents
challenges to, and faces challenges from, the others. The IRC and SC frameworks, based on substantive rationality, challenge the AC framework to ac-
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Political Research Quarterly
count for strategic and opportunistic political behavior. The AC framework's
more sophisticated incorporation of the roles of information and learning,
challenges the other frameworks to consider the ideological filtering of infor-
mation, and changes in individuals' beliefs, as mechanisms promoting or inhibiting policy change. The IRC framework's explicit consideration of collective
action problems challenges the failure of the AC and SC frameworks to explain how coalitions form and maintain themselves over time.
Furthermore, each framework requires further development. In particu-
lar, two areas need substantial attention-collective action and institutional
complexity. While these two areas do not exhaust the shortcomings of the
frameworks, they do represent areas, that if addressed, would achieve substantial theoretical purchase with very little work. The frameworks can, rather
easily, accept these changes.
First, both the AC and SC frameworks must come to grips with the prob-
lems posed by the necessity of collective action. Incorporating theories of
collective action would strengthen the basic premises of each framework. For
instance, the AC framework's treatment of beliefs as the glue binding coalitions together comes dangerously close to disregarding the lessons of the vari-
ous collective action literatures, beginning with the work of Olson (1965).
Simply because individuals hold common beliefs does not mean that they will
collectively act on those beliefs. For beliefs to act as an important explanatory
variable of policy outcomes, beliefs must be linked to individuals' ability to
form advocacy coalitions and to act in concert over time (Schlager 1995).
In order to form workable coalitions, individuals must overcome a series
of collective action problems. Even though members of a potential coalition
would agree that each would be better off if together they coordinated their
actions, that coordination may not occur because of freeriding problems. Shared
beliefs among individuals concerning appropriate policies and desirable outcomes may reduce the costs of overcoming freeriding. Identifying potential
coalition partners may be easier, appeals to work together may more likely be
heeded, and substantial heterogeneities among individuals, that under other
circumstances would impede cooperation, may be muffled by shared beliefs.
Forming a coalition is not the end of collective action problems. Members
must agree upon a particular policy to pursue, which raises critical distributional issues. There may be a variety of policies that would make each member of a coalition better off. However, each policy likely makes some members
of the coalition better off than others. Consequently, reaching agreement on a
specific policy, deciding how to allocate the benefits produced by a particular
policy, may be difficult to achieve. Coalition members must resolve other distributional issues such as allocating the costs of engaging in collective action,
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A Comparison of Three Emerging Theories of the Policy Process
i.e., providing meeting space, writing draft legislation, conducting research
and writing reports, etc., not to mention gaining consensus on the strategies
that the coalition will use to attempt to achieve its policy goals.
The more completely a coalition resolves these collection action problems, the more stable, strong, and effective the coalition is likely to be. The
consistency, and overlap of individuals' beliefs is likely to support coordination. Thus, while beliefs play a central role in the AC framework as filters of
information, as bases for strategy selection, and so forth, beliefs have a much
more substantial role to play, a role that can be realized once collective actions
issues are admitted into the framework.
The SC framework can also be strengthened by paying explicit attention
to collective action. No doubt, political uncertainty and political compromise
strongly influence the policies a group selects and the strategies a group pursues to realizes its policy goals. The twin pressures of uncertainty and compromise that bear down on a group, however, are mediated by how the group
resolved the numerous collective action problems it confronted. For instance,
political compromise may shatter a group that could find consensus only on a
narrowly defined policy goal. On the other hand, political compromise may
play a minor role in the adoption of a particular policy if its supporting coali-
tion has largely resolved many of its most pressing collective action issues. It
may be sufficiently stable and influential that it need not compromise, or com-
promise much, for its policy goals. The structure, stability, and effectiveness
of a coalition are a function of whether and how it resolved its collective action problems, and thus how it will respond to political uncertainty and com-
promise. This is something that the SC framework fails to account for by
simply assuming that groups, or coalitions, exist.
Second, both the SC and the IRC frameworks, at least in their applications, fail to account for institutional complexity created by constitutionallevel arrangements such as a separation of powers and federalism as found in
the U.S. Such complexity means that a given problem situation does not involve a single federal agency, its congressional overseers, perhaps the presi-
dent, and active interest groups, as Moe has focused upon. Instead, a given
problem situation is much more likely to include more than a single federal
agency, their congressional overseers, perhaps a court, coalitions organized at
the national level, a state agency or agencies implementing the policy, perhaps
a state's legislators and governor, and coalitions active within the state. While
this setting is somewhat more complex than the current SC framework, it
immeasurably adds to its explanatory power.
Similarly, the AC framework may have been developed with larger-scale,
federal-level policymaking in mind. Future efforts to apply the AC framework
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Political Research Quarterly
in order to explain policymaking in state and local settings may illuminate
shortcomings that have not been revealed heretofore. It remains to be seen,
for example, whether the prominent role accorded to scientific and technical
analysis by the AC framework exhibits the same significance in policymaking
in local jurisdictions.
Incorporating subnational actors would also allow greater attention to be
paid to policy implementation. The implementation process itself is strongly
affected by political uncertainty and compromise, as subnational actors come
to grips with placing the policy into -practice. Implementation outcomes in
turn affect groups at the national and state levels that are likely to remain
active, and the nature and influence of political uncertainty and compromise
in subsequent rounds of policy formation. Thus, by accounting for institutional complexity the SC framework is expanded to explicitly include implementation, while the powerful explanatory variables of the SC framework are
brought to bear on this area.
The issue of addressing institutional complexity is of greater significance
to the IRC framework. The framework must prove useful for handling more
institutionally complex situations if it is to gain wider acceptance. Applying it
to more complex situations, characterized by both cooperation and coercion,
and involving multiple actors (corporate as well as individual) and multiple
decisions occurring across several decision situations, is not a straightforward
task. Analysts may become quickly overwhelmed in attempting to track down
dozens of actors and the strategies they pursue in a rich and varied institutional context. Problems emerge in attempting to simplify the analysis, since
there are no guidelines informing the analyst when it would make sense to
lump similar actors together and treat them as a single actor, or which types of
institutional rules (if any) can be safely ignored.
This discussion of the frameworks' comparative strengths and weaknessess
in handling institutional complexity may raise for some readers another question: whether the frameworks differ also in their applicability to different policy
areas, in the sense meant by Lowi (1972). Policies of the regulatory, and especially of the self-regulatory, type may show more signs of the organizationalchoice-for-political-control decision making emphasized by the SC framework.
The significance the AC framework places upon coalitions' differing core be-
liefs and values may give it an advantage in accounting for redistributive
policymaking. The IRC framework has been applied to policies of all types
identified by Lowi, but most often to less-conflictual distributive and regulatory ones.
We do not believe the shortcomings identified above are fatal to any of
the frameworks. In some cases the lessons and insights produced by the various literatures addressed in the introduction can be drawn upon. For instance,
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A Comparison of Three Emerging Theories of the Policy Process
problems of collective action and methods of resolving such problems are
relatively well understood and form the subject of a growing literature in po-
litical science and economics. In other cases, such as developing a more satisfactory model of the individual, a model that admits both opportunism and
learning, await rich and productive research programs. Regardless of how these
issues are resolved within the context of each framework, together they reveal
that there is much to be gained by considering the policy process as a whole.
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