ABSTRACT
How do strategically oriented actors shape policy outcomes in political systems characterized by diffused authority, institutional fragmentation, and competing networks? Polemic debates in the 1990s privileged either the material resource of powerful actors or the “softer” processes of arguing and persuasion amongst relatively equal policy participants. Today those somewhat artificial debates have given way to combined approaches which try to account for both strategic intent and discursive persuasion. This chapter presents one such approach: strategic framing. Even governmental actors seeking preferred outcomes know they cannot force decisions through by dictate. They must build supportive coalitions, shape institutional environments in conducive ways, and craft a powerful narrative around certain outcomes. They often do so, this chapter maintains, by building a conceptual frame for policy choice, characterized by a particular problem definition, a rationale for action, and a preferred policy solution. Strategic framing is neither purely discursive nor purely instrumental: it is intended to shape policy deliberation in certain directions, but sometimes over long periods of time and not always in ways that framers envision.
