Master_thesis

(1) It never identifies a set of causal drivers that govern the process within and
across stages;
(2) The proposed order of stages is often descriptively inaccurate;
(3) It does not provide a clear basis for empirical hypothesis testing;
(4) The stages heuristics is typically focused on the passage and implementation of
a major piece of legislation and neglects the interaction of the implementation
and evaluation of numerous pieces of legislation;
(5) It inappropriately emphasizes the policy cycle as the temporal unit of analysis;
and
(6) It falls short in providing a good means for integrating the roles of policy
analysis and policy-oriented learning all through the public policy process.
As a conclusion, stages heuristics has outlived its usefulness to explain a very complex
policy process (Sabatier, 1999).
The ACF addresses the limitations of the stages heuristics. Sabatier (1999) equips four
criteria of ACF and two of these criteria are related to this study, which are:
(1) Address the broad sets of factors of public policy-making such as conflicting
values and interests, information flows, institutional arrangements and
variation in the socioeconomic environment; and.
(2) Each framework must be the subject of a fair amount of recent conceptual
development and/or empirical testing. A number of currently active policy
scholars must view it as a viable way of understanding the policy process.
With these criteria, the ACF among the other approaches will provide much more
information in understanding the policy process and policy change in the Philippines.
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