Stakeholders, Advocacy Coalitions and The Policy Process: Policy Change in Everglades Restoration

This study is about advocacy coalitions' efforts at influencing the debate
surrounding the formulation of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP).
Policy change as utilized in the dissertation views the adoption of CERP as a change in
government policy on Everglades restoration that was achieved through competing
stakeholders and coalitions. As one of the largest environmental restoration projects ever
undertaken in the U.S. and possibly the most complex in terms of reconciling stakeholder
views and understanding the science of restoration, the federal government and the state
of Florida were keen on providing a formal participatory process for stakeholder input.
The formulation process leading up to the adoption of CERP forms a unique study in our
understanding of coalition behavior, their efforts at influencing governmental policy and
the way the deliberative and participatory process worked. The major purpose of the
dissertation is to examine the perceived effectiveness of stakeholders and coalitions,
specifically the environmental and agribusiness coalitions, to influence policy change in
Everglades restoration. The study looks at how policy change was achieved within the formal institutions established and other infonnal channels developed through
cooperation and consensus.
Utilizing the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), interest group and coalition
building literature, I hypothesize that the influence of coalitions in bringing about policy
change is affected by five factors: internal factors such as (I) heterogeneity of
stakeholders' beliefs, (2) membership size and external factors including (3) the presence
of policy brokers, (4) change in the systemic governing coalition, and (5) presence of
multiple coalitions. These factors are assumed to have contributed to altering or
changing the dynamics and the direction of discourse in the policy process. Data was
drawn from interviewing stakeholders who are members of the environmental and
agribusiness coalitions and from secondary sources.
The study shows that both the environmental and agribusiness coalitions perceive
their efforts to be effective and instrumental in impacting the events and issues in the
restoration process and particularly in influencing policy change. The study also reveals
that the deliberative and participatory process, although sometimes contentious, has been
a successful mechanism in allowing stakeholders to influence the formulation of CERP.