This study analyses the Mozambican higher education policy developments between 1993 and 2003. To explain these developments the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) developed by Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith (1986) is used. In short, this framework argues that acting on the basis of beliefs, actors form coalitions to realise their beliefs in public policy. Policy change happens due to a shift in the dominant coalition and through the process whereby coalitions create new understandings of reality that affect their ideas on policy goals. The unique context in which the Mozambican higher education sector developed challenges the ACF's assumptions and expectations. Mozambique can be characterised as a turbulent country given that over the last four decades state models have changed three times. Only since the early nineties have democratic principles, such as free elections, freedom of speech and an independent legal system, been introduced. The country is rebuilding itself after almost 30 years of war and is developing key organisations to make democracy work, including independent legal institutions, parliament and an independent press. Furthermore, the country is characterised by extreme poverty. The framework, like most other established public policy theories or frameworks, was developed in a western industrialised context. A key question answered in this study is whether the ACF may be profitably applied to the volatile context in which Mozambican higher education policy evolved.
The study reveals that the core aspect of ACF applies also to the turbulent context of Mozambique namely that policy change occurs when beliefs change and actors come together to influence the government programme. It also points out that ACF is built on basic assumptions, which generally apply to stable industrialised countries but not to countries with a high degree of civil and political turbulence e.g. large numbers of actors in subsystems, policy cores consisting of intertwined issues, a stable environment. The study therefore suggests that ACF needs to be refined further to improve the fit.
