ABSTRACT
The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) is a framework of the policy process developed by Paul A. Sabatier and Hank Jenkins-Smith to deal with "wicked" problems– those involving substantial goal conflicts, important technical disputes, and multiple actors from several levels of government. This chapter presents an abbreviated version of the 1999 edition of the ACF. It analyses key concepts and causal processes, particularly with respect to policy subsystems, the devil shift, and coalition membership. It deals with a summary of some of the limitations of the ACF and important questions for future research. The ACF assumes that policymaking in modern societies is so complex, both substantively and legally, that participants must specialize if they are to have any hope of being influential. This specialization occurs within policy subsystems composed of participants who regularly seek to influence policy within a policy subsystem, such as California water policy.
