Search Results (31)

This article focuses on an advocacy campaign for a complete ban on vaping in Kazakhstan led by the Smokefree Kazakhstan Coalition. Initiated in 2021, the campaign aimed to address the growing public health concerns about vaping among adolescents, which was reflected in a sharp increase in vape use among young people—from 1.6% in 2014 to 5.8% in 2022. Despite facing strong opposition from the vaping industry and political lobbyists, the Coalition gained support from key political figures, public health leaders, and NGOs. Over 32 months, the campaign achieved several key milestones, including the inclusion of criminal liabilities for those involved in the vaping industry, and, in 2024, it eventually joined a number of countries such as Thailand, Qatar, Japan, Singapore, and India in approving a vaping ban. The advocacy efforts relied on public engagement, social media, and coordinated civil society mobilization—including petitions, public meetings, awareness campaigns, and coalition-building among NGOs and health advocacy groups—to overcome industry resistance toward official vaping market ban approvals. This article uses the case study approach with the Power Prism framework to describe and evaluate the advocacy campaign’s strategic plan, its political challenges, and the significant impact of public health advocacy in shaping national health policy. The significance of the article lies in the success of the vaping ban in the Kazakhstani context, which may serve as a model for other countries facing similar public health issues, political instability, and industry resistance. Full article

This study examines the policy and technological dynamics shaping China’s road transport sector’s transition to low-carbon sustainability, focusing on battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (HFCEVs). As the world’s second-largest carbon emitter, China faces significant challenges in reducing its fossil fuel dependency in road transport, which accounts for diverse emissions and energy security risks. The present work, using a dual tech multi-level perspective (DTMLP) framework integrating multi-level perspective (MLP) and an advocacy coalition framework (ACF), analyzes the interplay of landscape pressures (global carbon constraints), regime dynamics (policy–market interactions), and niche innovations (BEV/FCEV competition). The results reveal BEVs’ dominance in light-duty markets, achieving remarkable operational emission reductions but facing lifecycle carbon lock-ins from battery production and coal-dependent power grids. HFCEVs demonstrate potential for heavy-duty decarbonization but struggle with gray hydrogen reliance and infrastructure gaps. Policy evolution highlights shifting governance from subsidies to market-driven mechanisms, alongside regional disparities in implementation. This study proposes a three-phase roadmap: structural optimization (2025–2030), technological adaptation (2030–2045), and hydrogen–electric system integration (post-2045), emphasizing material innovation, renewable energy alignment, and multi-level governance. Our findings underscore the necessity of coordinated policy–technology synergies, grid decarbonization, and circular economy strategies, to overcome institutional inertia and achieve China’s ‘Dual Carbon’ targets. This work provides actionable insights for global sustainable transport transitions amid competing technological pathways and geopolitical resource constraints. Full article

Background: The aim of this study was to document how Mexico adopted a WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC)-based national tobacco control law. Methods: We analyzed publicly available documents and interviewed 14 key stakeholders. We applied the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) to analyze these findings. Results: Previous attempts to approve comprehensive FCTC-based initiatives failed due to a lack of political will, the tobacco industry’s close connections to policymakers, and a lack of health advocacy coordination. Applying the MSF reveals increased attention towards collecting and sharing data to frame the severity of the problem (problem stream). The expansion of a coordinated health advocacy coalition and activities led to increased support for desired FCTC policy solutions (policy stream). The election of President López Obrador and legislative changes led to a deep renewed focus on tobacco control (politics stream). These three streams converged to create a policy window to secure a strong FCTC-based initiative on the political agenda that was ultimately passed. Conclusions: The Mexican experience illustrates the importance of continued health advocacy and political will in adopting FCTC-based policies. Other countries should follow Mexico’s lead by collecting and sharing data through coordinating efforts in order to be prepared to seize political opportunity windows when strong political will is present. Full article

EU politics on decarbonizing shipping is an argumentative endeavor where different policy actors strive try to influence others to see problems and policy solutions according to their perspectives to gain monopoly on the framing and design of policies. This article critically analyzes, by means of argumentative discourse analysis, the politics and policy process related to the recent adoption of the FuelEU Maritime regulation, the world’s first legislation to set requirements for decarbonizing maritime shipping. Complementing previous research focusing on the roles and agency of policy entrepreneurs and beliefs of advocacy coalitions active in the policy process, this paper dives deeper into the politics of the new legislation. It aims to explore and explain the discursive framing and politics of meaning-making. By analyzing the political and social meaning-making of the concept “decarbonizing maritime shipping”, this paper helps us understand why the legislation was designed in the way it was. Different narratives, storylines and discourses defining different meanings of decarbonization are analyzed. So is the agency of policy actors trying to mutate the different meanings into a new meaning. Two discourses developed in dialectic conversation framed the policy proposals and subsequent debates in the policy process, focusing on (i) incremental change and technology neutrality to meet moderate emission reductions and maintain competitiveness, and (ii) transformative change and technology specificity to meet zero emissions and gain competitiveness and global leadership in the transition towards a hydrogen economy. Policy actors successfully used discursive agency strategies such as multiple functionality and vagueness to navigate between and resolve conflicts between the two discourses. Both discourses are associated with the overarching ecological modernization discourse and failed to include issue of climate justice and a just transition. The heritage of the ecological modernization discourse creates lock-ins for a broader decarbonization discourse, thus stalling a just transition. Full article

Partnerships between water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and rights-holder organisations (RHOs) have become more common, important and impactful in the international development sector, and they have been driven by aligned agendas, mutual benefits and the pursuit of locally owned and inclusive development agendas. There are opportunities to broaden partnerships and coalitions to include climate change advocacy, adaptation and mitigation organisations given the increased focus on the links between WASH, resilience and climate change action. This article takes a first step in addressing the question: How can the experience of WASH, gender equality and climate organisation partnerships and coalitions in the Blue Pacific inform the WASH sector in its growing support of and investment in diverse partnerships in support of localism? We conducted a systematic scoping review to identify the literature on gender equality, WASH and climate change-related partnerships and coalitions in the Blue Pacific. Three key themes emerged from the systematic scoping review based on 23 studies published from 1996 to 2024. Firstly, partnerships and coalitions are part of a critical localism agenda, though care needs to be taken by potential partners and donors to understand and manage power dynamics between actors and organisations working within and across sectors. Secondly, a range of benefits and success factors have been documented on partnerships and coalitions in the Blue Pacific, including support for emerging leadership, leveraging policy outcomes, facilitating learning and the sharing of frameworks and tools between partners. Thirdly, like all parts of the community and governance ecosystem, gender dynamics and social norms inform and influence partnerships and coalitions. At the same time, partnerships are important for informing and driving gender equality and inclusion at the local and regional levels including within the WASH sector. This article is useful for local actors, donors and civil society organisations wishing to pursue the mutually beneficial goals of WASH, gender equality, climate change action and localisation in the Blue Pacific. Full article

In grassroots water environment governance, political–community dialog is an unavoidable issue. Traditional policy analysis tools emphasize top-down stages and sequences, often ignoring the essential role of social factors (organizations, resources, or individuals)—outside the policy subsystem—in policy advocacy. The Advocacy Alliance Framework (ACF) provides a perspective on the role of social factors in policy changes and the interaction mechanism driving the relevant stages and alliances. In this study, we re-examine the key elements of the ACF and extract the grassroots logic of policy advocacy by discussing how actors act from policy divergence to policy learning, constructing an action framework to explain grassroots social policy advocacy in China. We find that policy advocacy depends on the joint influence of multiple elements such as the alliance members, alliance belief system and alliance resources. Therefore, social forces can better intervene in the policy agenda and achieve effective political–community dialog by identifying the relevant elements. Full article

This paper applied the advocacy coalition framework to explore and explain the political processes creating policies to enhance energy efficiency of European Union (EU) industry. The paper used legislation on energy audits and energy management systems as a proxy for EU policy on energy efficiency in industry. Based on qualitative text analysis of EU policy documents, including a proposal to recast the energy efficiency directive, amendments to the proposal suggested by Member States, the Council and the European Parliament, and reports from negotiations, the paper identified four advocacy coalitions with different core beliefs, spanning from those that want few companies to implement energy audits or energy management systems, and that recommendations from audits should not be mandatory to implement, to those that advocate that many companies implement energy audits and management systems and that it should be mandatory to implement measures recommended in audits. It was further found that policy change followed an external shock, deliberative negotiations, and policy-oriented learning. The identification of core beliefs and advocacy coalitions will help policymakers and other stakeholders become more aware of their own and others’ values on energy efficiency and how these could be changed. As important was the differentiation of deep core beliefs, policy core beliefs and secondary beliefs. Which beliefs can be easily changed, which cannot? Full article

China’s biogas industry has experienced ups and downs over the past two decades, with various challenges pointing to misplaced expectations that biogas technology is overly focused on energy production. With the promotion of China’s low-carbon strategy, a more rational and sustainable transformation strategy is crucial for the development of the biogas industry. To elucidate the sustainable development process of the biogas industry, this study applies the socio-technical transition theory and the strategic niche management (SNM) approach to understand the multi-regime interactions of biogas systems and their possible future paths. At present, the Chinese biogas industry needs to abandon the expectation of energy recovery and establish the expectation of multi-functional combination, especially including nutrient cycling. This study proposes a sustainable transformation path for the biogas industry and predicts three phases based on the type of socio-technological transformation path: a transformation path to 2030 to promote niche innovation and develop core technologies; a reconfiguration path from 2030 to 2050, which will require a lot of trials and errors; and the expansion of market share in 2050 through technology replacement. This study highlights the importance of niche experimentations and broad advocacy coalitions for the biogas industry. This research also illustrates how the transformation of China’s biogas industry can be achieved through incremental innovation with consistent policy support. Full article

Studies on policy change focus on governmental decision-making from a technical rationality perspective, ignoring the fact that policy change is a complicated social construction process involving multiple actors. This study used the modified advocacy coalition framework to explain changes in China’s family planning policy and discourse network analysis to show the debate on the birth control policy among multiple actors (central government, local governments, experts, media, and the public). It found that the dominant coalition and the minority coalition can learn and adjust deep core beliefs from each other; the sharing and flow of actors’ policy beliefs drive change in the network structure; and actors’ obvious preferential attachment when the promulgation of the central document, are all helpful in policy change. This study can explain macro-policy changes from a micro-perspective to reveal the process and mechanism of policy changes in China’s authoritarian regime. Full article

Since the 1990s, sport policy research has gradually attracted increasing academic attention as a reflection of contemporary society at a particular time. This study adopted four types of theory proposed by Houlihan (2014) to analyze the research development of sport policy. It conducted a systematic review and yielded 100 policy articles related to elite sports, physical education, and sport for all. The scope of the research data was identified from 2000 to 2020 with collation from 24 international Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) journals, which specialized in policy and sport–related studies of social science to look forward to a comprehensive report. The four major findings were as follows: first, this study pointed to evidence that nearly half the research on the topic aimed at meso–level analyses of organizations; second, it demonstrated governance theory, the Sports Policy Factors Leading to International Sporting Success (SPLISS) model, the advocacy coalition Framework (ACF), and network-related theories played a pivotal role in focusing on policy backgrounds and dynamic relationships within organizations; third, it identified some studies highlighted in the policy texts themselves, or discourse about them, and, thereby, were grouped into the fifth type; finally, the paper suggested that attention has been brought to policy formation and implementation rather than policy evaluation, which has made a contribution to the development of their own operating mechanisms. Full article

The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) is a theoretical approach developed for the study of the emergence of public policies in pluralist countries. Little is known about the relevance of the framework for the study of policies in non-pluralist countries (NPCs). A review of the literature was conducted on the use of ACF in studies performed in NPCs. Nineteen documents were identified. They were based on studies conducted in China, Laos, and Vietnam. The results show that the ACF is a powerful theoretical approach for highlighting the dynamics of interactions between coalitions that exist in NPCs, as in pluralist countries, and for highlighting their specificity. ACF is a relevant tool for the study of the determinants of the emergence of public policies in NPCs. Full article

The Energy transition is fiercely competitive. The incumbents of fossil-based energy are in conflict with the advocate coalitions of transition in energy policy changes. Such changes do not occur as sudden punctuation via an external shock, but rather incrementally and over time, by incorporating power insights such as lobbies, coalitions, and campaigns. This article provides a framework grounded in theoretical power theories and draws additional insights from policy mix studies. It investigates how focusing events and feedback loops shape the coalition of interest groups in policymaking through implementations of power mechanisms. Our framework is tested through two different power stories of energy transition in Iran and Germany. Our findings reveal that the centrally planned economy of Iran leaves society with a negligible or passive role in the energy transition. The passive role of society in the energy transition is mainly caused by subsidizing energy. In addition, the financial and economic crisis resulting from other macro-economic challenges, such as sanctions, may exacerbate the minor involvement of civil society in the slow expansion of renewables in Iran. By contrast, as a robust economy with a corporatist tradition, Germany has made a strong advocacy coalition of energy transition that resulted in political incentives for substantial renewable energy deployment. Regarding the theoretical question of the power dynamics in divergent countries’ energy transitions, the proposed framework based on the interest group coalitions and power mechanism offers an understanding of the social character of energy transitions. Full article

Previous scholars have noted the increase in negotiated agreements as a means of resolving utility regulatory disputes in the United States. These agreements allow policy actors to make their own decisions instead of receiving orders from a regulatory agency. Through a natural gas utility case study in the state of Utah, this paper examines the Advocacy Coalition Framework’s (ACF) novel explanation of the conditions contributing to a negotiated agreement with the emergence of new energy efficiency programs. Using the ACF, coalition groupings are divided out as either those in favor of energy efficiency programs or those against that change. A content analysis explores the presence of the conditions leading to a negotiated agreement. This article finds that the ACF model provides a theoretical lens to understand negotiated agreements in utility regulation. While utility agreements resolving regulatory proceedings seem to only grow, more research opportunities exist for further study on the ACF and these outcomes in utility regulation. Full article

Communities across the United States face a widespread water crisis including risks of contamination, rate increases, shut-offs for non-payment, and dilapidating infrastructure. Against this background, a right to water movement has emerged which has found its strength in coalition-building and collectivity. Activists demand change using the framing of “water is a human right”, socially constructing the right to water from below. Based on more than 25 semi-structured interviews with water advocates and activists, our article explores how movement participants used the human rights framework to advocate for clean and affordable water for all. We used political opportunity theory and conceptions of government “openness” and “closedness” to examine when and how advocates decided to use confrontational and cooperative approaches. We identified a push and pull of different strategies in three key spaces: in the courts, on the streets, and at the Capitols. Advocates used adversarial approaches including protests and civil disobedience, reliance on human rights mechanisms, and to a more limited extent litigation simultaneously with cooperative approaches such as engaging with legislators and the development of concrete proposals and plans for ensuring water affordability. This adaptiveness, persistence, and ability to identify opportunities likely explains the movement’s initial successes in addressing the water crisis. Full article

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. Full article