Why do Policy Frames Change? Actor-Idea Coevolution in Debates over Welfare Reform

Steensland, Brian

doi:10.1353/sof.0.0027

Cited by 70 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 47 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Similar benefits may, for example, be portrayed as earned or as charity (Skocpol 1991). These frames will shape interpretation in the community (Chong and Druckman 2007;Gamson and Modigliani 1989;Nelson, Oxley, and Clawson 1997;Slothuus 2007;Steensland 2008;Wiederspan et al 2015). There is no doubt that the ideological reception of a policy will be, in part, a reflection of its underlying design and material impact.…”

Section: Rethinking Universalism and Selectivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“More Normal than Welfare”: The Mincome Experiment, Stigma, and Community Experience

Calnitsky

2016

Canadian Review of Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Cet article traite de l'impact d'une expérience sociale menée dans les années 1970, l'Expérience du revenu annuel de base du Manitoba (MINCOME). J'examine le lieu de "saturation" de la MINCOME, la ville de Dauphin au Manitoba, où tous les habitantsétaient admissiblesà des versements de revenus annuels garantis pendant trois ans.À partir d'archives de récits qualitatifs des participants je montre que la conception et le discours autour de la MINCOME ont amené les participantsà voir les versements d'un oeil pragmatique, contrairement a la perspective moralisatrice qu'inspire le bien-être sociale. Conformémentà la théorie existante cet article constate que la participationà la MINCOME n'a pas produit de stigmate social. Plus largement, cetteétude discute de la faisabilité d'autres formes d'organisation socio-économiqueà travers une prise en compte des aspects moraux de la politiqueéconomique. La signification sociale de la MINCOMEétait suffisamment puissante pour que même les participants ayant des attitudes négativesà l'égard d'aides gouvernementales se sentirent capables de recevoir des versements de la MINCOME sans un sentiment de contradiction. En occultant les distinctions entre les "pauvres méritants" et les "pauvres non-méritants",

show abstract

Section: Rethinking Universalism and Selectivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“More Normal than Welfare”: The Mincome Experiment, Stigma, and Community Experience

Calnitsky

2016

Canadian Review of Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Against the backdrop of the financial crisis, the interests of labour, environmentalists, national security actors and corporate stakeholders could prove too diverse to be contained within a climate change initiative. Consequently, as Steensland (2008Steensland ( , p. 1030 puts it, the next stage in the evolution of frame analysis as a method is to devote more attention to analysing how and why frames enter and exit the arena of public discourse.…”

Section: Implications Of Frames For Political Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%

Clearing the air: the contribution of frame analysis to understanding climate policy in the United States

Fletcher¹

2009

Environmental Politics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Frame analysis illuminates the politics of climate change and generates ideas about discursive strategies that can assist national governments to take effective action on climate change. The nature of frame analysis and its links to discourse theory and social constructivist epistemology are discussed, and this framework used to show how climate change politics in the USA under the second Bush Presidency (2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008) have been viewed through at least three contrasting frames: scientific scepticism; climate change as a security threat; and climate change as an economic opportunity. The last of these frames, which uses the Apollo metaphor to liken the task of controlling climate change to the effort during the 1960s to put a man on the moon, is especially promising due to the wide appeal of its positive framing of climate policy in terms of technological achievement, industrial transformation and economic opportunity.

show abstract

“…In this article, I focus on frames used to shape public discussions of social problems and not the frames individuals use to process the world around them. These are often called policy frames, or discourses that shape public understanding by "promoting particular definitions of problems, diagnosing the causes underlying those problems, or identifying and justifying potential remedies" (Steensland 2008(Steensland :1029. 4 Yet, as the literature on the policy process colonized the study of framing-and vice versa-some of Goffman's most important insights have been jettisoned (Gamson 1985).…”

Section: Deception Disclosure and Discursive Framing In The Policy mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Public Life of Secrets

Bail

2015

Sociological Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While secrecy enables policy makers to escape public scrutiny, leaks of classified information reveal the social construction of reality by the state. I develop a theory that explains how leaks shape the discursive frames states create to communicate the causes of social problems to the public and corresponding solutions to redress them. Synthesizing cultural sociology, symbolic interactionism, and ethnomethodology, I argue that leaks enable nonstate actors to amplify contradictions between the public and secret behavior of the state. States respond by "ad hoc-ing" new frames that normalize their secret transgressions as logical extensions of other policy agendas. While these syncretic responses resolve contradictions exposed by leaks, they gradually detach discursive frames from reality and therefore increase states' need for secrecy-as well as the probability of future leaks-in turn. I illustrate this downward spiral of deception and disclosure via a case study of the British government's discourse about terrorism between 2000 and 2008.Keywords cultural sociology, political sociology, secrecy, symbolic interactionism, comparativehistorical sociology "For in the order of things it is found that one never seeks to avoid one inconvenience without running into another." -Machiavelli (The Prince, chapter 21) A vast literature explains how policy makers shape public understandings of social problems in order to accomplish their agenda (e.

show abstract

Why do Policy Frames Change? Actor-Idea Coevolution in Debates over Welfare Reform

Cited by 70 publications

References 47 publications

“More Normal than Welfare”: The Mincome Experiment, Stigma, and Community Experience

“More Normal than Welfare”: The Mincome Experiment, Stigma, and Community Experience

Clearing the air: the contribution of frame analysis to understanding climate policy in the United States

The Public Life of Secrets

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About