Professor Wilson Wong, MPUP Programme Director, has published a new article in the Policy Studies Journal (PSJ) (impact factor: 2.83; Political Science: 18/169; Public Administration: 10/47)

The article is entitled “Advocacy Coalitions, Policy Stability, and Policy Change in China: The Case of Birth Control Policy, 1980–2015” (co-authored with Professor Li Wei). In the article, Professor Wong and Professor Li used the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) to explain stability and change in China’s national birth control policy from 1980 to 2015. They found that policy remained stable, despite internal and external changes to the relevant subsystem, from 1980 to 2013. The stability was explained by the dominant advocacy coalition’s mobilization of considerable resources to defend its policy core beliefs. Policy changes in 2013 and 2015 were caused by a combination of external and internal perturbations, in addition to policy‐oriented learning and advocacy by two expert‐led minority advocacy coalitions. The case showed that the openness and plurality of China’s policy processes had increased over time but were still limited in comparison with those in Western democracies.

The article can be accessed online via: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/psj.12329