Analysis of Policy Change

2.1 Policy analysis

Hill has observed that the term policy has been widely used in policy studies literature to imply a rational and instrumental process that is organised towards specific goals. This has led much of the policy analysis literature to be conceived of in linear terms according to stage models (Hill 2004). One such model is provided by Parsons, who conceives of the policy process as a cycle that follows the stages of problem definition, identification of solutions, evaluating options, selecting an option, implementation and evaluation (Parsons 1995). While this model is consciously a simplification intended as a heuristic device, it is representative of the way that policy analysis has traditionally

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been geared towards linearity, rationality and explanations of actor motivation in terms of instrumental self-interest (Hill 2004).

Fischer characterises such approaches to policy analysis as “narrowly empiricist, rationalistic and technocratic”, with an emphasis on objectivity, efficiency, effectiveness and quantitative methods that aimed to mirror the methods of the natural sciences. He argues that these approaches to policy analysis have tended to ignore, or at best grudgingly accept, subjective concepts such as ideas and values. He also argues that this “empiricist” or “positivist” approach largely failed in its attempts to provide predictive power or policy relevance. This has led to the more recent emergence of an interpretive approach to policy analysis that considers actor motivations in policy making on the basis of the meanings actors ascribed to policy problem and actions in response to these problems (Fischer 2003: 1-15). Given that the first research question emphasises the social construction of institutions by actors, such an approach is more appropriate for the purposes of this Thesis.

Policy, according to Fischer, is defined as “a political agreement on a course of action (or inaction) designed to resolve or mitigate problems on the political agenda” (Fischer 2003: 60). This definition has in common with instrumental approaches to policy analysis the idea that policy involves action in response to a defined political problem (Hill 2004). But, drawing from the work of Heclo, Fischer seeks to broaden the scope of what these problems and actions mean. The nature of the ‘problem’ is something that is constructed, agreed upon and placed on an agenda by a range of different policy actors, rather than just being a self-defining phenomenon. The nature of the ‘action’ is not merely a political decision made within government, but a broader negotiated movement between multiple actors, which may involve not only change but also resistance to change (Fischer 2003, Heclo 1972). In order to illustrate this, Hannigan provides an example of how environmental policy problems are typically constructed. He identifies six factors that commonly combine to place environmental issues on the policy agenda. These are: 1) that the issue is given authority and validation by scientific research; 2) that there is a popularising agent who can translate scientific research to non-scientists; 3) the issue is presented by the media as novel and important to the public; 4) the issue is visually and symbolically dramatized; 5) economic incentives are created to promote positive action; 6) an institutional sponsor is found to ensure continuity and legitimacy. According to Hannigan, while the environmental issue under consideration might exist as a physical phenomenon, without these stages of construction it would not exist as an actionable political and policy phenomenon (Hannigan 1995: 54-55).

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Therefore according to this conception, policy is something constructed by policy actors and formulated on the basis of shared symbols and ideas, and moreover the meanings different actors attach to these symbols and ideas. Fischer proposes a number of analytical approaches that can be used in order to conceptualise the way that policy is constructed in this way. Of these, the one selected for use in this Thesis is Schӧn and Rein’s approach to policy frame analysis. This analytical approach is suitable for addressing the research questions of this Thesis for a number of reasons. Firstly, it provides an explicit link between policy formation and wider institutional context, and is therefore suitable as a means of analysing the connection between macro and micro levels. Secondly, it is concerned with the way that policy actors seek to reconstruct policy agendas in order to overcome apparently intractable policy problems, and thus provides a means of explaining how policy change occurs. Thirdly, it deals specifically with the way that policy actors interact through the transfer of ideas and the use of persuasive discourses in order to build coalitions towards particular policy goals (Schӧn and Rein 1994). These features of Schӧn and Rein’s approach are outlined in more detail below.

2.2 Policy frames

Frame analysis derives from the work of Goffman on social movements (Goffman 1974), and has since been applied in a range of fields including sociology and social and cognitive psychology. The exact definition of a frame varies according to its field of application. However two common features can be found from across the framing literature; that they provide a means organising the experience of complex situations and that they provide a bias for action (Beland Lindahl 2008: 68- 70).

Rein and Laws have defined the specific idea of a policy frame as “a normative‐prescriptive story that sets out a problematic policy situation and a course of action to be taken to address the problematic situation” (Rein and Laws 1999: 3). Such a “normative-prescriptive story” involves the simplification of a complex policy problem through the employment of symbols so that it can then be presented as a “meaningful and structured whole” (van Gorp 2011: 5, Fischer 2003: 144). But in presenting a policy problem in a particular way, frames also shape the way that actors perceive the possibility and acceptability of the potential range of action responses to that problem (Gamson 1995).

Taking this definition further, Schӧn and Rein define policy frames as “underlying structures of belief, perception and appreciation” that determine the way policy actors perceive what constitutes the “facts” of a case and therefore determine how they define their own “interests” (Schӧn and Rein

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1994: 23). In this way, “interests” are removed from the instrumental and fixed characteristics ascribed in positivist methodology, and become constructs that are subject to change. On the basis of their constructed “interests”, policy actors are then able to frame policy issues in order to “provide conceptual coherence, a direction for action and a basis for persuasion” (ibid: 153). In this, Schӧn and Rein add an additional dimension to the framing process by dividing the bias for action function into practical and communicative aspects. It is these three aspects of frames that are of principle relevance to the analytical approach set out below.

The first aspect, conceptual coherence, concentrates on the framing of policy problems. In this respect Schӧn and Rein view policy frames in a nested context, where they are considered to be “not free-floating but grounded in the institutions that sponsor them”, and operate at three different levels (ibid: 29). At a localised level policy frames are concerned with specific policy issues. At a higher level institutional frames represent interconnected assemblages of frames rooted in a broader institutional context, which in turn influence the form of the specific policy frames that emerge from within this institutional context. At the highest level are meta-cultural frames, which represent metaphors and shared systems of belief that form the normative and ideational underpinnings of both institutional and policy frames (ibid: 34).

This hierarchy demonstrates that policy problems do not arise solely because of specific instrumental and material issues in a particular policy situation, but can be generated as a result of “frame-shifts” that take place remotely at different levels in the hierarchy (ibid 163-165). Fischer gives an example of such a frame shift in relation to environmental policy. He observed how in the 1990s, ideas about environmental protection at a global level shifted from a “limits to growth” frame that emphasised a need to curb economic growth, to a “sustainable development” frame that considered that growth and economic development could be compatible. This shift created a common frame between environmentalists, governments and businesses, and therefore established the basis for a more collaborative approach to dealing with environmental issues. Thus, although material problems relating to the environment existed prior to the 1990s, it was only once the policy terrain had been redefined in to terms acceptable to a wider range of actors that these problems became politically actionable. This broad global level agreement has thus allowed more specific policy approaches based on sustainable development to proliferate in specific national and sub- national settings around the world (Fischer 2003: 147)

This example demonstrates that even where actors are faced with material problems, without a shift in the institutional context that constrains their actions, they may be limited in the extent that they

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are able to provide a coherent policy response to these problems. In contrast, where a frame-shift does occur in an institutional or meta-cultural context, such as the case of the shift from limits to growth to sustainable development outlined above, these actors are enabled to adopt new ways of defining and reframing policy problems. This reframing process can take place consciously, where actors identify frame shifts and actively seek to utilise them towards specific ends, or unconsciously, where they come to realise that existing procedures no longer address the policy situation at hand and gradually come to adopt new ones (ibid 163-165).

Such frame-shifts are at the root of the bias for action aspect of the framing process. As Schӧn and Rein observe, “the perceived shift of a context may set the climate within which adversarial networks try to reframe a policy issue by renaming the policy terrain, reconstructing interpretations of how things got to be as they are, and proposing what can be done about them” (ibid: 154). Thus policy action does not come about as a result of a policy problem arising as a given, but rather as a result of actors operating within a particular institutional context reconstructing the meaning of what policy problems actually are and the action to be taken to solve them. As observed above, policy action is limited by what the institutional context determines is possible and acceptable (Gamson 1995). A frame-shift can therefore broaden the horizons of possible and acceptable action in such a context. The key to policy action is thus the way that the given policy situation is reframed by policy actors.

But reframing of the meaning of a policy problem is not sufficient in itself to promote action. It also requires that the agents of this reframing process are able to use the third aspect, communication and persuasion, in order to mobilise other actors towards supporting policy action that advances their own particular interests. In this way new possibilities of policy action can become actualised. In order to conceptualise this aspect, Schӧn and Rein introduce the idea of rhetorical frames. In contrast to action frames, which are concerned with policy practice, rhetorical frames are concerned with “persuasion, justification and symbolic display”. Their aim is to construct a story designed to communicate as much to the emotional as to the rational motivations of the intended audience, in order to shift the way these actors frame the policy situation as well. This provides a means of explaining how, in the circumstances of a frame-shift, actors constructions of their own interest can be changed through the agency of other policy actors employing these rhetorical frames (ibid 32-35). This analytical approach provides a basis of addressing the requirements outlined at the beginning of this Chapter. It provides a way of linking institutional change, in the form of frame shifts in institutional context, with policy change, in the form of reframing by policy actors. It conceives of the

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motivations of actors both in terms of constraints imposed by institutional context and in terms of the meanings they ascribe to policy problems that can lead them to initiating policy change. It also contains a means of conceptualising how policy actors mobilise ideas and discourse in order to persuade other actors to support a particular course of policy action.