Abstract
Policy advocacy has commonly been defined as individual and collective action in support of a cause or idea that may include such activities as public education, influencing public opinion, research for interpreting problems and suggesting preferred solutions, agenda setting and policy design, and lobbying (Reid, 2000). While the term is also sometimes used to describe internal debates within government for particular courses of action or for “selling” a policy once it has been agreed, its primary usage has been to describe attempts to articulate ideas and to persuade governments to adopt, reject, or amend new proposals or established policies. This implies that there is sufficient space within the political system to allow for the expression of diverse views or at least positions that are contrary to those held by the government.
In the Asian context, however, we are immediately faced with the problem that many political systems are either authoritarian or have only recently emerged as new democracies. These are systems where a pluralistic market for policy ideas is often still relatively underdeveloped and where, even in the “new democracies,” policy-making practices may relate more to their previous authoritarian incarnations than to their present ones. Developmental states, for example, may move quite quickly toward more democratic political institutions but experience much slower growth in the articulation of new policy ideas from civil society organizations. There may be many reasons for this: civil society itself may be constrained and underdeveloped, technocratic competence outside government may be limited, and policy formulation and the policy agenda itself may be still almost entirely the prerogative of the political/bureaucratic elite. In authoritarian systems, of course, where policy advocacy of a society-centered type is either prohibited or severely constrained, these considerations might be expected to apply to an even greater extent.
Yet, nonetheless, we find in most Asian political systems that, even under restrictions preventing a full-blown articulation of societal ideas, forms of policy advocacy do take place. How do we conceptualize these often complex, sometimes covert, means of expressing policy positions? How does the Asian experience relate to the well-established frameworks that have been used to analyze policy advocacy in Western democracies? In this special issue, we hope to make a contribution in three respects to what is likely to become an emerging debate over the form and character of policy advocacy in Asia. First, we consider the critical issue of the relationship between the state and society in terms of the expression of policy ideas. We analyze that relationship by means of case studies of two authoritarian systems, China and Singapore, and two democracies, the Philippines and South Korea, where a tradition of independent policy advocacy is better and longer established but which have both, in the recent past, also experienced some degree of authoritarianism. Second, we consider the question of whether the nature of policy itself might be a determinant of the form of advocacy. Three of our articles are concerned with environmental issues and a fourth relates to the technocratic field of public financial management. Do policy areas that require technocratic expertise beyond the competence of the government create the preconditions for advocacy coalitions to emerge? Finally, the contributors assess the relevance of, and in some cases seek to apply, the best known of the Western models of policy advocacy, Sabatier’s advocacy coalition framework (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1993; Sabatier & Weible, 2007). How useful is this framework in the Asian context? What modifications or further research might be necessary for it to be applied more widely in Asia than it has been so far?
The State and Policy Advocacy
The relationship between the state and policy advocacy, in both the authoritarian systems and in the new democracies, may be much more nuanced than a simple divide based on the extent of pluralism would suggest. Because authoritarian states may find that they need to gain access to ideas and technologies that stretch beyond their competence or capacity, the state itself may inadvertently create the conditions for the expression of views on policy that are permitted within a remit of specific state parameters on how policy should be made and implemented. In Maria Francesch-Huidobro and Quianqing Mai’s article on Chinese climate change policy, the authors describe a situation in which a local government has created state-sponsored bodies outside government to sell its policies. Such bodies over time may well develop their own views on how policy should be made and implemented and may come to act as policy advocates in their own right. The Singaporean case reminds us that not all authoritarian states necessarily behave in the same way toward those who advocate policy change. Stephan Ortmann’s article describes how the Singaporean government simultaneously employs the stick and the carrot, tightening the Public Order Act and prescribing “out of bounds” markers for policy areas that are not open to debate, while at the same time slightly loosening restrictions on freedom of expression in other areas.
While authoritarian states by definition are characterized by restrictive participation in policy debate (Sabatier & Weible, 2007), there are clearly societal attempts to overcome those restrictions when an issue stirs the public imagination. Wanxin Li describes how both fragile advocacy coalitions and pressure groups emerged in China over the issues of environmental information transparency and sanctioning environmental violations only to disappear once the issues had been temporarily resolved. The difficulties faced by groups and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in establishing themselves on a permanent basis as policy advocates are considerable, and many are content to avoid policy issues. Research suggests, for example, that many different types of NGOs in China have little interest in policy advocacy (Johnson, 2011; Zhan and Tang, 2011)and that even international NGOs may be co-opted into the system (Noakes, 2011). In Singapore, similarly, independent groups or coalitions attempting to argue for alternative or new policies face an uphill struggle. In Stefan Ortmann’s account, many have either been co-opted or coerced by the government; independent advocacy seems largely restricted to the Internet.
In the case of China, differences at the provincial and local government levels add important variations to the nature of policy advocacy (Cai, 2008). When so many policy issues are decentralized and principally of local concern, we should expect that different patterns of policy advocacy will arise. Wang (2008), for example, suggests that there may be as many as six different models of agenda setting. These different models may be helpful in explaining differences in advocacy patterns in China, but the issue is complicated by difficulties in identifying the critical variables. Although we might postulate that there is some relationship between economic growth, diversity, and policy advocacy, and that more economically advanced parts of the country, such as Guangdong province, are more likely to move toward more institutionalized, although still far from independent, advocacy systems, it not clear whether this is always the most important variable or simply one among many factors. The extent of decentralization and level of economic development of provinces such as Guangdong may affect the diversity and relative independence of policy advocacy, but it may be equally important whether decision makers in less affluent areas seek to promote policy change. If central or local authoritarian governments are committed to preserving the status quo, there is not much political space for policy advocacy. Once policy change is on the agenda, however, the prospect of influencing the nature of that change may itself be a galvanizing force for the emergence of advocacy groups and coalitions. In Guangdong, for example, there appears to be relatively more receptiveness to ideas from outside the system while in many other—but not all—parts of the country, the local political system appears to be much more closed.
The relationship between the state, civil society, and policy advocacy in the nonauthoritarian systems is equally problematic. At times, the ideas of civil society organizations may be welcomed by governments and even incorporated into their policies, but there is no necessary linear progress toward greater interaction between government and civil society or to the more institutionalized arrangements with advocacy coalitions and pressure groups that exist in Western states. The conditions for policy advocacy may not only vary in relation to the political framework within which, notionally, advocates work but may also be buffeted by a host of other internal and external factors, ranging from the government’s fears about security and the intentions of advocacy groups to the impact of international NGOs and global public policy.
As a consequence of these often uninstitutionalized processes, there are many different ways in which advocates seek to make their voices heard in the new democracies. In the Philippines, for example, which has—uniquely for Asia—a long tradition of institutionalized NGOs operating within the policy process, a history of acceptance of such organizations may have aided the emergence of technocratic advocacy coalitions that are attempting to ensure probity and effective public financial management. Yet, as Bjoern Dressel shows, the situation is volatile and evolving rapidly—although not necessarily linearly in the direction of greater diversity and accountability—which may help to explain, as he also shows, the importance of power brokers as intermediaries between the government and civil society organizations. In his case study of the Saemangeum project in South Korea, Pan Suk Kim is able to show how the changing political context over time influenced the way in which advocacy coalitions were able to express their views and to win support. Both case studies illustrate how changes in political leadership and regime may significantly affect policy advocacy in the short run.
Policy Advocacy and Types of Public Policy
Conceptualizing the role of the state in relation to civil society organizations and policy advocacy under such volatile conditions and in different forms at national, provincial, and local levels presents obvious difficulties. A second theme, which might be derived from the articles in this issue and which might offer a different perspective, focuses on the nature of the policy itself and whether it might be an important determinant of the kind of advocacy that occurs. A simple division into policy types could be based on the degree to which policy formulation is under the control of the government, which in turn might result in a threefold typology: policies where the underlying conditions do not permit complete control over policy—those which require technocratic expertise that the government does not possess and those that are, more or less, under the control of the government.
As examples of the first type, the articles in this issue on environmental policy formulation suggest that, even in authoritarian systems, it is difficult to prevent issues from entering the public domain. Environmental policy formulation takes place under conditions where there is often a large and attentive local and international public, where the government may require the expertise of individuals and local and international bodies, and where it may even be seeking endorsement of its policies by international funding organizations. Under such circumstances, policy spills over into the public arena and provides opportunities for groups to mobilize, to conduct their own public education campaigns, and to try to influence the agenda. A slightly different situation may arise when policy issues are scientific or highly technocratic and where the government needs to rely on outside expertise. The extent of public involvement in such cases might be much more limited. As Bjoern Dressel shows in his study of public financial management in the Philippines, pressure groups and policy brokers may be influential, but they may also be much smaller and more focused when they are concerned with largely technical issues rather than broader concerns such as corruption in public financial management. Finally, we can envisage situations where the government exerts control over public policies without permitting the issues to be discussed in public forums or allowing coalitions to be mobilized against the proposed measures or suggesting an alternative course of action. Singapore provides an interesting example of a government that is preventing many issues from being debated in the public domain. Even so, it is notable that it has not been able to exert quite as firm control over environmental policy as in other areas and that it has not been able to control policy discussions on the Internet.
The Advocacy Coalition Framework and the Asian Context
Sabatier’s influential advocacy coalition framework has not been applied to any great extent in the Asian context. Those scholars who have used the framework list critiques that might have broad applications, such as the inability of the framework to explain coalition formation and the mechanisms through which beliefs are translated into policy, and factors that might have particular applicability in Asia such as rapid structural changes that may have more relevance in explaining policy change than changes within the policy subsystem (Hsu, 2005; Kwon, 2007; Sato, 1999). The conditions specified in the latest version of the framework may also deter scholars from seeking to apply it in the rapidly evolving Asian institutional context. As Pan Suk Kim notes, there are at least four basic premises underlying the framework: that understanding the process of policy change requires a time perspective of a decade of more; that the most useful way to think about policy change over such a time span is through a focus on the policy subsystem, that is, the interaction of actors from different institutions who follow and seek to influence governmental decisions in a policy area; that those subsystems must include an intergovernmental dimension, that is, they must involve all levels of government at least for domestic policy; and that public policies or programs can be conceptualized in the same manner as belief systems, that is, as sets of value priorities and causal assumptions about how to realize them (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1993; Sabatier & Weible, 2007; Weible et al., 2011).
If we apply those criteria to our case studies, only Kim’s own study of the Saemangeum project, a project that extended over a period of 19 years, involved both national and local governments and clearly delineated policy subsystems, and that is conceptualized in terms of alternative belief systems, fully meets those criteria. Nonetheless, the advocacy coalition framework has utility, as several contributors observe, in drawing our attention to important features of the advocacy process in Asia.
We might note, first, that belief systems about public policies will be present in some form in all political systems. If those beliefs are ossified in an authoritarian system that is unchanging and unreceptive to new policy ideas, we should not expect in the short run to encounter much by way of alternative advocacy coalitions. However, in the longer term, there is likely to be a need for change that will generate new ideas and new belief systems. In China, for example, as our contributors observe, there are emerging coalitions in environmental policy, which may take very different forms from advocacy coalitions in Western systems but which, nevertheless, do represent alternative, or at least modified, beliefs about the way in which policy problems might be resolved. The environmental coalitions identified in the articles on China are not immediately recognizable as the kinds of coalitions we would expect to find in Western policy settings, but they still involve a structure and a process through which new ideas might be channeled to bring about policy change. The authors of both articles on China find it useful to supplement the advocacy coalition framework with the notion of “epistemic communities,” which serves to draw attention to the interplay of policy ideas within an informed, small group of public and private actors. Similarly, in Singapore, although there is no evidence of advocacy coalitions of the conventional type, there is certainly a marketplace for new policy ideas that may modify government thinking in some areas.
Another area in which the advocacy coalition framework has utility in Asia is in the identification of the role played by policy brokers in policy change. This is very strongly evident in Bjoern Dressel’s analysis of public finance advocacy coalitions in the Philippines, but it is also clear that policy brokers were of some significance for policy learning for both advocacy coalitions involved in the Saemangeum case. In China, too, there seems to be evidence that policy brokers are important in the environmental policy marketplace in the transmission of ideas from outside government to the policy makers and in liaising with NGOs and other actors in the society. Where processes are not well institutionalized—and they are not in many Asian countries—it might be expected that the role of policy brokers would be enhanced.
The case studies contained in this issue are illustrative and suggestive rather than providing hypotheses and concepts that can easily be built into new theory and frameworks. But they do offer the prospect of a path toward research, which would identify modes of policy change in non-Western settings and seek to compare it with what we already know about the process in the west. For the present, there remains the need for more empirical research in the Asian context on the ways in which policy ideas reach the decision makers’ agenda, how that agenda is affected by those ideas, the relationship and effect of changing regime values on the policy process, and the ways in which policy learning occurs.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no conflicts of interests with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.