Negotiating the supply of legal timber to the domestic market in Ghana: Explaining policy change intent using the Advocacy Coalition Framework

Negotiating a policy change involves formation of coalitions of actors in a particular policy subsystem with substantial mobilisation of resources to deploy strategic actions to direct the outcome of the process to a certain interest. The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) has been demonstrated as a useful heuristic framework to explain policy change within a particular political system. This study applies the ACF to the negotiation of a policy change for the supply of timber to the domestic market in Ghana. The study largely confirms selected coalition hypotheses and makes a contribution to a possible revision of some of them.

Research Highlights
► The VPA process stimulated coalitional advocacy for domestic timber policy reforms.
► Techncial information is critical to coalitional advocacy efforts for policy change.
► Organised dialogue platform facilitates coalitional engagement for policy reforms.