{"title":"(Un)usual advocacy coalitions in a multi-system setting: the case of hydrogen in Germany","authors":"Meike Löhr, Jochen Markard, Nils Ohlendorf","doi":"10.1007/s11077-024-09536-7","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Grand sustainability challenges span multiple sectors and fields of policymaking. Novel technologies that respond to these challenges may trigger the emergence of new policy subsystems at the intersection of established sectors. We develop a framework that addresses the complexities of ‘multi-system settings.’ Empirically, we explore belief and coalition formation in the nascent policy subsystem around hydrogen technologies in Germany, which emerges at the intersection of electricity, transport, heating, and industry and is characterised by a broad range of actors from different sectoral backgrounds. We find two coalitions: a rather unusual coalition of actors from industry, NGOs, and research institutes as well as an expectable coalition of gas and heat sector actors. Actors disagree over production, application, and import standards for hydrogen. However, there is widespread support for hydrogen and for a strong role of the state across almost all actors. We explain our findings by combining insights from the advocacy coalition framework and politics of transitions: Belief and coalition formation in a nascent subsystem are influenced by sectoral backgrounds of actors, technology characteristics, as well as trust and former contacts. Our study contributes to a better understanding of early stages of coalition formation in a multi-system setting.</p>","PeriodicalId":51433,"journal":{"name":"Policy Sciences","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Policy Sciences","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-024-09536-7","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Grand sustainability challenges span multiple sectors and fields of policymaking. Novel technologies that respond to these challenges may trigger the emergence of new policy subsystems at the intersection of established sectors. We develop a framework that addresses the complexities of ‘multi-system settings.’ Empirically, we explore belief and coalition formation in the nascent policy subsystem around hydrogen technologies in Germany, which emerges at the intersection of electricity, transport, heating, and industry and is characterised by a broad range of actors from different sectoral backgrounds. We find two coalitions: a rather unusual coalition of actors from industry, NGOs, and research institutes as well as an expectable coalition of gas and heat sector actors. Actors disagree over production, application, and import standards for hydrogen. However, there is widespread support for hydrogen and for a strong role of the state across almost all actors. We explain our findings by combining insights from the advocacy coalition framework and politics of transitions: Belief and coalition formation in a nascent subsystem are influenced by sectoral backgrounds of actors, technology characteristics, as well as trust and former contacts. Our study contributes to a better understanding of early stages of coalition formation in a multi-system setting.
期刊介绍:
The policy sciences are distinctive within the policy movement in that they embrace the scholarly traditions innovated and elaborated by Harold D. Lasswell and Myres S. McDougal. Within these pages we provide space for approaches that are problem-oriented, contextual, and multi-method in orientation. There are many other journals in which authors can take top-down, deductive, and large-sample approach or adopt a primarily theoretical focus. Policy Sciences encourages systematic and empirical investigations in which problems are clearly identified from a practical and theoretical perspective, are well situated in the extant literature, and are investigated utilizing methodologies compatible with contextual, as opposed to reductionist, understandings. We tend not to publish pieces that are solely theoretical, but favor works in which the applied policy lessons are clearly articulated. Policy Sciences favors, but does not publish exclusively, works that either explicitly or implicitly utilize the policy sciences framework. The policy sciences can be applied to articles with greater or lesser intensity to accommodate the focus of an author’s work. At the minimum, this means taking a problem oriented, multi-method or contextual approach. At the fullest expression, it may mean leveraging central theory or explicitly applying aspects of the framework, which is comprised of three principal dimensions: (1) social process, which is mapped in terms of participants, perspectives, situations, base values, strategies, outcomes and effects, with values (power, wealth, enlightenment, skill, rectitude, respect, well-being, and affection) being the key elements in understanding participants’ behaviors and interactions; (2) decision process, which is mapped in terms of seven functions—intelligence, promotion, prescription, invocation, application, termination, and appraisal; and (3) problem orientation, which comprises the intellectual tasks of clarifying goals, describing trends, analyzing conditions, projecting developments, and inventing, evaluating, and selecting alternatives. There is a more extensive core literature that also applies and can be visited at the policy sciences website: http://www.policysciences.org/classicworks.cfm. In addition to articles that explicitly utilize the policy sciences framework, Policy Sciences has a long tradition of publishing papers that draw on various aspects of that framework and its central theory as well as high quality conceptual pieces that address key challenges, opportunities, or approaches in ways congruent with the perspective that this journal strives to maintain and extend.Officially cited as: Policy Sci