Ene Ikpebe, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Reubin O.D. Askew School of Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University, authored “The minimum marriageable age policy process in the United States: An advocacy coalition framework analysis,” published in the Review of Policy Research (2025). The following summary was written by Jack Bump (B.S. Digital Media Production ‘27).
Florida State University Assistant Professor of public administration Ene Ikpebe, Ph.D., authored “The minimum marriageable age policy process in the United States: An advocacy coalition framework analysis.”
The paper, which was published in the Review of Policy Research (2025), sought to address three key questions about the minimum marriageable age policy process in the US: (1) Who are the major policy actors in this process? (2) What major coalitions have formed? and (3) What are the core policy beliefs shaping the discussion?
Dr. Ikpebe’s analysis showed how NGOs and state legislators have been the main actors and they have formed advocacy coalitions — either supporting or opposing a minimum marriage age of 18 — based on differing views of liberty, rights, and parental authority.
The study showed that the debate centers on the balance between parental and religious freedoms and the protection of minors from early or forced marriage, reflecting broader conflicts between personal beliefs and policy concerns.
“By identifying the subjects of debate, the paper helps us understand why the formal discussion of child marriage and minimum marriageable age policy in the US has had a relatively late start, compared to similar developed countries. The article also contributes to our understanding of advocacy coalition formation, i.e., the types of beliefs that allow policy actors to organize productively as they seek to influence policy-making,” said Dr. Ikpebe. “Finally, by applying the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) to a policy area to which the lens had not previously been applied, the paper deepens scholarly confidence in the usefulness of the theory.”
She believes the findings open several avenues for future research, including the internal dynamics of the identified coalitions and the evolution of policy actors’ advocacy activities over time. Questions also remain about how exactly external factors in the social, economic, and political environment shaped coalition efforts and which strategies were found to be most effective in advancing the child marriage issue on the policy agenda and whether they apply to related policy areas.
To learn more about Dr. Ikpebe and her work, visit cosspp.fsu.edu/askew/faculty/ene-ikpebe, or to learn more about the Askew School of Public Administration, visit cosspp.fsu.edu/askew.