Coalition Breakdown and Subsystem Exit
本文提出联盟破裂的三种模式（分裂、分化、解散），并探讨内部威胁与民主衰退等外部冲击如何导致联盟瓦解，对理解日益极化的社会中的政策动态有重要意义。
ABSTRACT Why actors choose to work together (or not) to advance policy has been the central area of inquiry within the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). Existing research has mainly emphasized the pathway towards coalition formation and evolution, underscoring the stable patterns of allies and opponents observable in policy processes over a decade or so. Why coalitions fracture, splinter or dissolve has seldom been theoretically articulated or empirically investigated, which leaves policy process research in the dark on the unstable factors of coalition evolution. This perspectives stresses three modes of coalition breakdown—the process by which an established advocacy coalition (i) fractures—a mode of enhanced internal conflict producing differentiated coordination patterns, (ii) splinters into competing coalitions—where previous allies stop working together entirely, and (iii) dissolves—the subsystem exit of an existing coalition. Focusing on internal threats, but also the external shocks provided by democratic backsliding, the article advances foundational theory on why coalitions fissure, become dormant and collapse—policy dynamics that are expected to continue to persist in an increasingly polarized society.