Global governance of emerging technologies and the advocacy coalition framework: An introduction to the symposium

Emerging technologies interact with social, economic, and regulatory structures, producing complex and far-reaching effects. Governing these technologies requires transnational coordination, as national policies often generate cross-border consequences. Epistemic communities play a central role in shaping shared problem definitions, causal beliefs, and policy interpretations. While international relations scholarship has explored the geopolitical, economic, and institutional dimensions of emerging technology governance, less attention has been paid to how actors’ beliefs drive policy outcomes. This Symposium addresses this gap by applying the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), which links micro-level learning and belief formation to macro-level policy change. By foregrounding coalition-based dynamics, the ACF provides a structured lens to analyse how epistemic communities mobilise around technological governance issues and influence global norms. This Symposium focuses on four emerging technological domains: cyber warfare (Shires and Smeets), human germline genome editing technology (Lo), military application of artificial intelligence (Onderco and Javadi), and 5G (To).