Competing coalitions can stabilise policymaking and hinder policy changes that are required to address the mounting pressures on land use systems across the globe. Thus, understanding the driving forces of coalition formation is important. This paper builds on the Advocacy Coalition Framework to determine the relative contributions of two sets of beliefs (more general policy core beliefs and more specific beliefs concerning policy instruments) to coalition formation in South African tree plantation politics and to identify coalitions therein. Discourse Network Analysis was used to code 656 statements regarding 40 beliefs to create network data from 55 interviews with organisational elites. Results from a network analysis of the twelve most salient beliefs indicate that dissimilar policy core beliefs about the validity of environmental regulation, social costs of tree plantations, and the conditionality of land reform in South Africa divide actors into two coalitions: the hegemonic “business-as-usual” coalition and the minority “justice and change” coalition. These boundaries were confirmed by comparing the network based on shared policy core beliefs with a co-ordination network. Dissimilar beliefs concerning policy instruments, including eco-certification and an indicative zoning, also divide actors, yet actors’ reasoning for or against these instruments differ to the degree that united fronts are unlikely to form. Hegemonic coalitions that combine selected state and business interests with labour arguments and prioritise short-term economic efficiency threaten to delay the necessary changes away from business-as-usual across land use systems in South Africa and beyond.

竞争激烈的联盟可以稳定政策制定并阻碍应对全球范围内土地使用系统不断增加的压力所需的政策变更。因此，了解联盟形成的动力很重要。本文基于“倡导联盟框架”，确定了两组信念（更一般的政策核心信念和与政策工具有关的更具体的信念）对南非人工林政治中联盟形成的相对贡献，并确定了其中的联盟。话语网络分析被用来编码656条关于40种信念的陈述，以通过55次组织精英访谈来创建网络数据。对十二种最明显信念的网络分析结果表明，关于环境监管有效性的不同政策核心信念，人工林的社会成本以及南非土地改革的条件将参与者分为两个联盟：霸权的“一切照旧”联盟和少数的“正义与变革”联盟。通过将基于共享策略核心信念的网络与协调网络进行比较，可以确认这些边界。关于政策工具（包括生态认证和指示性分区）的不同信念，也使参与者之间存在分歧，但参与者对这些工具的支持或反对理由在很大程度上不同，因此统一阵线不太可能形成。霸权联盟将选定的州和企业利益与劳工论据相结合，并优先考虑短期经济效率，这有可能使必要的变更推迟到南非及其他地区的土地利用系统的一切照旧。