60081

ministration & SocietyScott

Publications
AAS446S10.1177/00953997

Introduction
Administration & Society

Analyzing Advocacy 44(6S) 4­–12

© 2012 SAGE Publications
DOI: 10.1177/0095399712460081
Issues in Asia http://aas.sagepub.com

Ian Scott1

Keywords
Policy advocacy; advocacy coalitions; advocacy coalition framework

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 expres-
sion 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 prob-
lem 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

1
City University of Hong Kong, China

Corresponding Author:
Ian Scott, Department of Public and Social Administration, City University of Hong Kong,
Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China
Email: sascott@cityu.edu.hk

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Scott 5S

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 pre-
rogative 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 com-
plex, 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 authori-
tarianism. 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 techno-
cratic field of public financial management. Do policy areas that require tech-
nocratic 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 frame-
work (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1993; Sabatier & Weible, 2007). How use-
ful 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 authori-
tarian systems and in the new democracies, may be much more nuanced than

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6S Administration & Society 44(6S)

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 tech-
nologies 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 imple-
mented 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 simultane-
ously 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 informa-
tion 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 them-
selves 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, indepen-
dent 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 con-
cern, we should expect that different patterns of policy advocacy will arise.
Wang (2008), for example, suggests that there may be as many as six

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different models of agenda setting. These different models may be helpful in

explaining differences in advocacy patterns in China, but the issue is compli-
cated 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 coun-
try, such as Guangdong province, are more likely to move toward more insti-
tutionalized, 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 develop-
ment 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 cen-
tral 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 rela-
tively 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

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necessarily linearly in the direction of greater diversity and accountability—

which may help to explain, as he also shows, the importance of power bro-
kers 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 sup-
port. 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 con-
ditions 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 man-
agement in the Philippines, pressure groups and policy brokers may be influ-
ential, but they may also be much smaller and more focused when they are
concerned with largely technical issues rather than broader concerns such as

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corruption in public financial management. Finally, we can envisage situa-

tions where the government exerts control over public policies without per-
mitting 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 govern-
ment 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 mecha-
nisms 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 under-
lying 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

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10S Administration & Society 44(6S)

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 pres-
ent 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 envi-
ronmental policy, which may take very different forms from advocacy coali-
tions 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 advo-
cacy 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 mar-
ketplace 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 set-
tings and seek to compare it with what we already know about the process in

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Scott 11S

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.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no conflicts of interests with respect to the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or pub-
lication of this article.

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Bio
Ian Scott is emeritus professor of government and politics and a fellow of the Asia
Research Centre at Murdoch University and visiting professor in the Department of
Public and Social Administration at the City University of Hong Kong.

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