Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

When looking at policy change, many theories focus on policy subsystems as the primary mechanism for change. The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) provides a theoretical lens to explore ally and conflict networks, including how these coalitions engage in policy-oriented learning. To date, the majority of ACF studies have focused on environmental policy arenas, with relatively less research in social policy. This project uses the passage and implementation of California’s Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) from 2004 to present to test ACF’s propositions of coalition formation and policy learning as a means for policy change. Voters approved the CA MHSA, a 1% tax increase on millionaires in order to expand mental health services, with a portion of this funding reserved for innovative ideas to be tested and possibly implemented. A small number of counties have utilized this money to test new ideas and increase the quality of services, suggesting the development of coalitions and the presence of policy learning. A combination of archival research and interviews across a set of matched counties will be utilized to test these hypotheses.