Studies on policy change focus on governmental decision-making from a technical rationality perspective, ignoring the fact that policy change is a complicated social construction process involving multiple actors. This study used the modified advocacy coalition framework to explain changes in China's family planning policy and discourse network analysis to show the debate on the birth control policy among multiple actors (central government, local governments, experts, media, and the public). It found that the dominant coalition and the minority coalition can learn and adjust deep core beliefs from each other; the sharing and flow of actors' policy beliefs drive change in the network structure; and actors' obvious preferential attachment when the promulgation of the central document, are all helpful in policy change. This study can explain macro-policy changes from a micro-perspective to reveal the process and mechanism of policy changes in China's authoritarian regime.
Keywords: advocacy coalition framework; discourse network analysis; family planning policy; policy change; preferential attachment.