Compare methods

	Advocacy Coalition Framework	Punctuated Equilibrium Analysis
Field	Public Policy	Public Policy
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1993	1993
Originator	Paul Sabatier & Hank Jenkins-Smith	Frank Baumgartner & Bryan Jones
Type	Theory of the policy process	Theory of the policy process
Seminal source	Sabatier, P. A., & Jenkins-Smith, H. C. (Eds.) (1993). Policy Change and Learning: An Advocacy Coalition Approach. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. ISBN: 9780813316499	Baumgartner, F. R., & Jones, B. D. (1993). Agendas and Instability in American Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 9780226039398
Aliases	ACF, Sabatier-Jenkins-Smith Framework, Advocacy Coalition Approach	PET, Punctuated Equilibrium Theory, Baumgartner-Jones Theory
Related	4	4
Summary	The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) is a theory of the policy process developed by Paul Sabatier and Hank Jenkins-Smith from the late 1980s and consolidated in their 1993 volume Policy Change and Learning. It explains policy stability and change over long periods by analysing competing coalitions of actors within a policy subsystem who are bound together by shared beliefs. Policy change is understood as a function of the interaction among these belief-based coalitions, the policy-oriented learning that occurs over time, and external events and shocks that can shift the balance of power among them.	Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET), developed by Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones in their 1993 book Agendas and Instability in American Politics, explains how policymaking is characterised by long periods of stability and incremental change interrupted by brief, dramatic bursts of major change. Borrowing the metaphor from evolutionary biology, it argues that the way an issue is understood (its 'policy image') and the institutional 'venue' in which it is handled normally reinforce a stable equilibrium — until attention shifts, the image is reframed, and rapid, large-scale change punctuates the calm.