Content area
Full Text
This study examined the process of smoking control policymaking in Japan, employing the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) and the Policy Process Analysis (PPA). In the view of the ACF, changes in policies and policymaking are explained as resulting from the emergence of, and the competition among, two advocacy coalitions, either protobacco or antitobacco. On the other hand, the PPA conceives of the process of policy change as a set of processes and gives a closer look into the important aspects of policymaking that the ACF does not well examine.
Observation of politics is, as Edelman (1971) argues, not simply an effort to learn what is happening but rather a process of making observations conform to sets of assumptions, which are called models. Models state the relationships that have been observed between conditions and patterns in political life, and they accumulate credibility as evidence appears to support them (Almond & Powell, 1966, p. 15). These models differ in terms of the perceived decisionmaking actors, which are conceptual units employed as independent variables, as well as the efficacy acknowledged to them. As a model, the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) provides a useful conceptual framework that explains the stability and change of policies. It has a focus on the coalitions that share a set of normative and causal beliefs and often act in concert, and understands policy changes as the consequences of coalitions' competition to translate their ideas into official actions. On the other hand, there is another model with a long tradition that perceives policymaking and change as a set of policy processes. That model, which I call here the Policy Process Analysis (PPA), examines how issues evolve, agendas are set, choices are made, and certain alternatives are implemented. While the ACF is presented sometimes as a successor to the PPA, the PPA can augment the ACF when the details of how coalitions evolve and how they actually translate their beliefs into governmental behaviors are examined.
This paper examines the policy processes of smoking control in Japan and tests the applicability of the ACF. The ACF has not been applied to cases in non-Western countries, nor to cases of smoking control. The process of smoking control policymaking is a highly political one, in that plural social...