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Learning and Change in the British Columbia Forest Policy Sector: A Consideration of Sabatier's Advocacy Coalition Framework*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Ken Lertzman ,
Jeremy Rayner  and
Jeremy Wilson
Ken Lertzman
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University
Jeremy Rayner
Affiliation:
Malaspina University-College
Jeremy Wilson
Affiliation:
University of Victoria
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Abstract

This article uses British Columbia forest policy to test our ability to distinguish between policy change and policy learning using the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) developed by Paul Sabatier. The authors find the ACF a useful way of approaching policy change in this sector, but argue that finer discriminations are needed to detect policy learning. They argue that Sabatier underestimates the extent to which the legitimation function of key ideas forces dominant advocacy coalitions to respond to criticisms in ways that promote learning. They conclude that, in this case, adaptive strategies undertaken by a dominant advocacy coalition in response to criticism has resulted in policy-oriented learning that may cause a major policy shift without an externally induced crisis in the forest policy sector.

Résumé

Cet article se sert de la politique forestière en Colombie Britannique pour mesurer notre capacité de différencier entre changement de politique et apprentissage de politique en se servant du Cadre de la Coalition du Plaidoyer (CCP) développé par Paul Sabatier. Les auteurs trouvent que le CCP est une méthode d'approche utile en ce qui concerne le changement de politique dans ce secteur, mais d'après eux, il faut des distinctions plus précises pour vérifier l'apprentissage de politique. Selon eux, Sabatier sous-estime le degré jusqu'où la fonction de légitimation des idées principales oblige les principales coalitions de plaidoyer à répondre aux critiques de façon à encourager l'apprentissage. Ils concluent que, dans ce cas-ci, les stratégies adaptives entreprises par une coalition de plaidoyer dominante pour répondre à la critique ont eu pour résultat un apprentissage concentré sur la politique qui peut causer un changement majeur de politique sans crise provoquée de l'extérieur dans le secteur de la politique forestière.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 111 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1996

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References

1 British Columbia, Ministry of Forests, The Proposed Forest Practices Code for British Columbia (Victoria, 1993Google Scholar); British Columbia, British Columbia's Forest Renewal Plan (Victoria, 1994Google Scholar); and British Columbia, Commission on Resources and the Environment, Vancouver Island Land Use Plan (Victoria, 1994Google Scholar).

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5 Sabatier, “Policy Change,” 25.

6 Ibid., 19.

7 Ibid., 19–20.

8 Ibid., 34.

9 Sabatier, “An Advocacy Coalition Framework, 143–48.

10 Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, “The Advocacy Coalition Framework,” 220.

11 Bennett and Howlett, “The Lessons of Learning,” 277, 287.

12 Ibid., 287–88.

13 Orchard, C. D., “Forest Working Circles,” Memorandum to the Hon. A. Wells Gray, August 1942Google Scholar, vol. 8, file 15, Orchard Papers, UBC Special Collections; and MacMillan, H. R., Forests for the Future: Conditions Essential to a Sustained Yield Policy for Management of British Columbia Coast Forests (Vancouver: H. R. MacMillan Export Company, 1945Google Scholar).

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24 M'gonigle, Michael, “From the Ground Up: Lessons from the Stein River Valley,” in Magnusson, Warren et al., eds., After Bennett: A New Politics for British Columbia (Vancouver: New Star Books, 1986), 169–91Google Scholar; M'gonigle, Michael, “Developing Sustainability: A Native/Environmentalist Prescription for Third-Level Government,” BC Studies 84 (1990), 65–99Google Scholar; and Hammond, Herb, “Public Forests or Private Timber Supplies? The Need for Community Control of British Columbia's Forests,” written submission to the BC Round Table on Environment and the Economy, 1989.Google Scholar

25 Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, “The Advocacy Coalition Framework,” 228.

26 John F. Munro, “California Water Politics: Explaining Policy Change in a Cognitively Polarized System,” in Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, eds., Policy Change and Learning, 124.

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28 Sabatier, “Policy Change,” 34–35.

29 The details that have emerged from the appearances of former premier William Bennett before securities commissions in British Columbia and Ontario on charges of insider trading in the shares of forest company Doman Industries provide a fascinating glimpse of just how close these links were.

30 Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, “The Advocacy Coalition Framework,” 223.

31 Atkinson, Michael and Coleman, Willian, The State, Business and Industrial Change in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

32 This argument is familiar to historians of political thought; see Tully, James, “The Pen Is a Mighty Sword,” British Journal of Political Science 13 (1983), 489–509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Sabatier, “Policy Change,” 33.

34 Haas, Ernst, “Collective Learning: Some Theoretical Speculations,” in Breslauer, George and Tetlock, Philip, eds., Learning in U.S. and Soviet Foreign Policy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), 72–76.Google Scholar

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36 Haas, “Collective Learning,” 72.

37 Participants at a workshop on biodiversity hosted by the UBC Faculty of Forestry were somewhat taken aback to be “welcomed” by an address from the Dean in which he argued that biodiversity research “adressfes] questions of value as questions of science” (Binkley, Clark, “Biological Diversity: Human Values and Scientific Uncertainty Challenge Public Policy,” UBC Faculty of Forestry, February 1994Google Scholar).

38 Lee, Kai N., Compass and Gyroscope: Integrating Science and Politics for the Environment (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1993), 177.Google Scholar

39 Haas, “Collective Learning,” 69.