The Slow Road to Big Change: Extending the Advocacy Coalition Framework with the Theory of Gradual, Institutional Change

The Advocacy Coalition Framework is a policy process framework that explains subsystem-level policy change as a function of competition by advocacy coalitions. The ACF’s theory of policy change expects that abrupt policy changes are more likely to reflect major change, while incremental developments are more likely to yield minor changes. While the ACF does not explicitly preclude the possibility of major change occurring over a long time horizon via incremental developments, the theoretical pathways do not readily accommodate or explain such cases. In contrast, the theory of Gradual Institutional Change (GIC) offers a typology associated with gradual (incremental), transformative (major) change, as well as an underlying theory to account for such changes, building on distinctions between the process of change (incremental or abrupt) and the result of change (discontinuity or continuity). The GIC identifies four “modes” of institutional change (i.e., displacement, layering, conversion and drift), and suggests that when major change can occur over a shorter time frame, it is analogous to the non-incremental and discontinuous process typically examined by the ACF. The GIC further posits that incremental, transformative (major) change is influenced by similar forces as those that influence non-incremental change, such as political context, key policy actors, and institutions. The GIC thus offers an opportunity to apply concepts of gradual, institutional change in the context of the ACF theory of policy change. Given these theoretical and empirical observations, this study has two objectives: 1) to identify strategies for using concepts from the GIC in the context of the ACF; and 2) to illustrate the added value of an extended framework. The study begins with a description of the theoretical frameworks, including motivation and operationalization of the proposed integration, followed by an illustration applied to the disability policy subsystem in Washington State. The study responds to recent calls for more integration of the policy process and comparative politics literatures, and follows in the tracks of other innovations that build on and/or extend the Advocacy Coalition Framework with insights from other theoretical traditions. The extension is expected to increase the scope and relevance of both theories and offer broader opportunities for empirical application.