LEARNING AND CHANGE IN THE BRITISH-COLUMBIA FOREST POLICY SECTOR - A CONSIDERATION OF SABATIERS ADVOCACY COALITION FRAMEWORK

This article uses British Columbia forest policy to test our ability t o distinguish between policy change and policy learning using the Advo cacy Coalition Framework (ACF) developed by Paul Sabatier. The authors find the ACF a useful way of approaching policy change in this sector , but argue that finer discriminations are needed to detect policy lea rning. They argue that Sabatier underestimates the extent to which the legitimation function of key ideas forces dominant advocacy coalition s to respond to criticisms in ways that promote learning. They conclud e that, in this case, adaptive strategies undertaken by a dominant adv ocacy coalition in response to criticism has resulted in policy-orient ed learning that may cause a major policy shift without an externally induced crisis in the forest policy sector.