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Since Rein and Schön developed their approach to policy framing analysis in the1990s, a range of approaches to policy framing have emerged to inform our understanding of policy processes. Prior attempts to illuminate the diversity of approaches to framing in public policy have largely "stayed in their lane," making distinctions in approaches within shared epistemic communities. The aim in this paper is to map different approaches to framing used in policy sciences journals, to articulate what each contributes to the understanding of the policy process, and to provide a heuristic to aid in deciding how to use the diverse approaches in framing analysis and to further the dialogue across different approaches. To develop the heuristic, we manually coded and analyzed 68 articles published between 1997 and 2018 using "frame" or "framing" in their title or abstract from four policy journals: Critical Policy Studies, Journal of European Public Policy, Policy Sciences, and Policy Studies Journal. We identified five approaches, which we label: sensemaking, discourse, contestation, explanatory and institutional. We have found that these approaches do not align with a simple binary between interpretive and positivist but show variation, particularly along the lines of aims, methodology and methods. In the discussion, we suggest that these five approaches raise four key questions that animate framing studies in policy analysis: (1) Do frames influence policies or are policies manifestations of framing? (2) What is the role of frame contestation in policy conflict? (3) How can the study of frames or framing reveal unheard voices? And (4) how do certain frames/framings become dominant? By introducing these questions, we offer a fresh way scholars might discuss frames and framing in the policy sciences across approaches, to highlight the distinct yet complementary ways they illuminate policy processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children faced many challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the school closure policies that were implemented to combat it. When justifying closures, governments had to decide how to frame children's vulnerability, as their decisions protected children from some harms while forcing them to endure others. Children are typically framed as vulnerable to justify implementing protective policies but given that these protective policies came with severe consequences for children, it was not an inherently appropriate framing in this case. This study compares the press releases about school closures produced by the Victorian and New South Wales state governments to examine how they framed children's vulnerability and how this positioned their obligation to protect children. It concludes that even though school closures were protective policies, neither government framed children as particularly vulnerable. This is likely explained by the fact that many of the consequences of school closures were harmful to children, so emphasising their vulnerability may have made it harder to retain public support for these policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to reveal evidence-based problems of the first 1000 days of a child’s life and their positioning in Lithuania. The article is based on a narrative literature review. The data were analysed using public policy problem framing approach, restricted to identifying different framings of the problem. The main framings of the problem of the first 1000 days of a child’s life were identified: (1) biomedical (emphasis on influence of environmental factor when considering child’s development, as well as future of his health outcomes); (2) socio-economic (emphasis influence of poverty on child development, returns from early investments in children, the strengthening of future human capital; (3) nurturing care (emphasis the importance of health care, social protection, nutrition, responsive relationships); (4) sustainable development (emphasis the concern of early childhood, the necessity to resolve health, poverty, and environmental issues, and strengthening peace and solidarity). All framings focus on the life course perspective of child’s life and the intergenerational nature of problems. Different fields’ problem-presenting frameworks do not compete with one another but serves as the foundation for a robust policy agenda for early childhood development. Both in science and in the media, Lithuania is dominated by an exclusively biomedical framings of the problem. Although in the Lithuanian education system, early childhood education is defined as pre-school, treated from the birth of the child, but the educational solutions of the first 1000 days of the child’s life are left to the responsibility of the parents. In the social sector, the first 1000 days are more associated with protection against violence after the birth of a child. Preventive health care for pregnant women and children in Lithuania is carried out in an established general guideline, without excluding vulnerable groups and without prioritizing the first 1000 days of a child’s life. Systematic research, advocacy coalitions and the inclusion of the problem on the political agenda are lacking in this field. It is recommended to finance interdisciplinary research on the first 1000 days of a child’s life, to create coalitions and a state program for the first 1000 days of a child’s life in Lithuania.

Welfare chauvinism, that is, the exclusion of non-citizens who live permanently within a state from social benefits and services, has become a mainstream form of welfare policy opposition advocated by some political parties and members of the public. While existing studies have successfully cast a light on the roots and scope of these policies, welfare chauvinism effectively encompasses a wide range of ideas that all have different meanings. Drawing on the stances taken by populist radical right parties, this article introduces five categories (or frames) of welfare chauvinism: temporary, selective, functional, cultural and, in its most extreme form, unconditional chauvinism. The article then illustrates how such categorization is applied empirically by focusing on the stances taken by three populist radical right parties and open-ended discussions held during mini-publics in examples of three different institutional forms of welfare state: Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom. This article offers a more precise depiction of how this form of opposition to welfare state policies plays out in the public sphere, taking full account of how different forms and frames of welfare chauvinism yield different policy outcomes and implications in different institutional and political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seeking to derive lessons for future policy processes on how climate change concerns can be integrated into sectoral policies to expedite policy approval, we applied the Multiple Streams Framework to analyze the forces and dynamics at work in the policy process of Brazil's National Biofuel Policy (known as RenovaBio). Based on an analysis of 123 newspaper articles citing “RenovaBio” and eleven semistructured interviews with stakeholders from the fuel sector, the research findings suggest that attaching RenovaBio to the country's climate commitments helped to secure policy approval and decrease public opposition to it. On the other hand, having multiple objectives without a clear priority made policy direction more diffuse and vulnerable to criticisms. We also found that the existence of multiple policy entrepreneurs, in the different stages of the political process and with complementary skills, helped to speed the legislative process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to reveal evidence-based problems of the first 1000 days of a child’s life and their positioning in Lithuania. The article is based on a narrative literature review. The data were analysed using public policy problem framing approach, restricted to identifying different framings of the problem. The main framings of the problem of the first 1000 days of a child’s life were identified: (1) biomedical (emphasis on influence of environmental factor when considering child’s development, as well as future of his health outcomes); (2) socio-economic (emphasis influence of poverty on child development, returns from early investments in children, the strengthening of future human capital; (3) nurturing care (emphasis the importance of health care, social protection, nutrition, responsive relationships); (4) sustainable development (emphasis the concern of early childhood, the necessity to resolve health, poverty, and environmental issues, and strengthening peace and solidarity). All framings focus on the life course perspective of child’s life and the intergenerational nature of problems. Different fields’ problem-presenting frameworks do not compete with one another but serves as the foundation for a robust policy agenda for early childhood development. Both in science and in the media, Lithuania is dominated by an exclusively biomedical framings of the problem. Although in the Lithuanian education system, early childhood education is defined as pre-school, treated from the birth of the child, but the educational solutions of the first 1000 days of the child’s life are left to the responsibility of the parents. In the social sector, the first 1000 days are more associated with protection against violence after the birth of a child. Preventive health care for pregnant women and children in Lithuania is carried out in an established general guideline, without excluding vulnerable groups and without prioritizing the first 1000 days of a child’s life. Systematic research, advocacy coalitions and the inclusion of the problem on the political agenda are lacking in this field. It is recommended to finance interdisciplinary research on the first 1000 days of a child’s life, to create coalitions and a state program for the first 1000 days of a child’s life in Lithuania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial serves as an introduction to Media and Communication’s thematic issue Policy Framing and Branding in Times of Constant Crisis. Crises cast challenges for political actors and concurrently create opportunities for policymaking, public reflections, and political competition. In times of crisis, when it comes to communicating policymaking but also framing the crisis itself, issues close to political communication (including political marketing and political branding) become of paramount relevance. The eight articles of this issue cover a broad array of subjects, expanding the understanding of the relevance of communication when it comes to policymaking in times of crisis, through the lens of policy framing and policy branding.

Historical accounts of the EU recurrently turn to crisis as a periodizing or structuring concept, reflecting the observation made by scholars that crisis has become a permanent feature of the social construction of our social and political reality. The concept of crisis can also be exploited for strategic purposes by political actors pursuing various policy agendas. Our article analyzes the discursive uses of crises by one of the central institutions of the EU, the European Commission, based on a corpus of press releases that referred to crisis (N = 4,414) going back two decades (2003–2022). Thus, our article examines crisis as a political language and its discursive uses. We ask: (a) how salient is the topic of “crisis” in the European Commission’s communication; (b) what are the main domains in which the crisis frame has been activated, from geographical scope to policy areas; (c) how did the deployment of crisis frames change in time along major policy areas like economy, migration, or climate change; and (d) in what terms has the crisis-frame been activated, and how does crisis word use vary by region and policy area. Methodologically, we pursue these research questions using text-as-data methods, combining natural language processing tools for identifying geographical scopes, actors, and policy areas with corpus methods for identifying keywords and collocates and manually coding the latter, relying on qualitative and quantitative reasoning. Our research contributes to understanding the dynamics of EU policy framing in times of crisis.

This article critically examines the communicative and policy-framing response of Australia’s Victorian government to the state’s growing crisis of far-right extremism. Through a critical discourse analysis of the Victorian Andrews and Allan Labor governments’ political communication from 2021 to 2023, we explain how the government discursively responded to the rise of far-right extremism. We found the Andrews and Allan governments employed a range of communicative, discursive, and legitimisation strategies to both legitimise the government’s policy to ban Nazi symbols and gestures and to (re)establish Victoria’s reputation as an inclusive and multicultural liberal democracy. The findings of this article broaden our empirical understanding of the central role of political and crisis communication in responding to extremism and may provide a template for other governments to respond to the global crisis of far-right extremism.

Climate change, which nowadays is frequently framed as climate crisis in order to highlight the urgent need to take action to tackle it, has been studied extensively both in communication and political science disciplines. This contribution uses as an example the International Maritime Organization to highlight the utilization of its social media, and in particular its Twitter/X account, to frame that it supports climate action in the shipping sector and to brand itself as a green organization. The article offers an analytical framework which illustrates that policy branding is one of the most accurate tools to perform policy framing. It continues by showcasing that this is a procedure that governance institutions use to promote a deliberate message, even if this is not on track with what the institution is expected to do. The empirical data gathered, and processed through content analysis, paints a clear image of how this happens in the era of social media and leads to the conclusion that it is necessary to study policy framing and policy branding within the context they take place; otherwise, wrong conclusions might be drawn.

Abstract Background Ghana became the first African country to take delivery of the first wave of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine from the COVAX facility. But why has this promising start of the vaccination rollout not translated into an accelerated full vaccination of the population? To answer this question, we drew on the tenets of a policy analytical framework and analysed the diverse interpretations, issue characteristics, actor power dynamics and political context of the COVID-19 vaccination process in Ghana. Methods We conducted a rapid online review of media reports, journal articles and other documents on debates and discussions of issues related to framing of the vaccination rollout, social constructions generated around vaccines, stakeholder power dynamics and political contentions linked to the vaccination rollout. These were complemented by desk reviews of parliamentary reports. Results The COVID-19 vaccination was mainly framed along the lines of public health, gender-centredness and universal health coverage. Vaccine acquisition and procurement were riddled with politics between the ruling government and the largest main opposition party. While the latter persistently blamed the former for engaging in political rhetoric rather than a tactical response to vaccine supply issues, the former attributed vaccine shortages to vaccine nationalism that crowded out fair distribution. The government’s efforts to increase vaccination coverage to target levels were stifled when a deal with a private supplier to procure 3.4 million doses of the Sputnik V vaccine collapsed due to procurement breaches. Amidst the vaccine scarcity, the government developed a working proposal to produce vaccines locally which attracted considerable interest among pharmaceutical manufacturers, political constituents and donor partners. Regarding issue characteristics of the vaccination, hesitancy for vaccination linked to misperceptions of vaccine safety provoked politically led vaccination campaigns to induce vaccine acceptance. Conclusions Scaling up vaccination requires political unity, cohesive frames, management of stakeholder interests and influence, and tackling contextual factors promoting vaccination hesitancy.

Student mobility in the Nordic countries has traditionally been characterized by cultural cooperation and egalitarian values. Yet, the region has not been isolated from international trends towards emphasizing excellence and competition in the global knowledge economy. Policy framing is here used as an analytical lens for analysing national policy documents on international student mobility over a 20-year period. The analysis finds that the Nordic countries have become increasingly different in how international student mobility is framed. In both Denmark and Finland, the economic frame has become prominent, yet containing somewhat different kinds of ambitions and concerns. In Sweden and Norway, the framing is still predominantly educational. The article challenges the assumptions of the Nordic countries as a cohesive region, and provides a critical exploration into how justifications for international student mobility include important national translations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is twofold: to theoretically assess ideational and organizational explanatory factors in the adoption of artificial intelligence policies; and to examine the extent to which the European Union has managed to facilitate a coordinated artificial intelligence policy in the Nordic countries. The study utilizes a mixed - methods approach based on systematic web searching, systematic policy document analysis and key informant semi - structured interviews. The study finds that the European Union has utilized framing-based strategies to set an agenda for a coordinated European artificial intelligence policy. Moreover, the strategy has affected member-state artificial intelligence policies to the extent that key tenets of European Union artificial intelligence discourse have penetrated Nordic public documents. However, the extent to which the Nordic countries incorporate European Union artificial intelligence policy discourse diverges at the national level. Differentiated national organizational capacities among Nordic countries make the adoption of artificial intelligence policies divergent. This observation is theoretically accounted for through a conversation between organizational theory of public governance and discursive institutionalism. The study argues that the framing of European Union artificial intelligence policies is filtered through organizational structures among states. Points for practitioners: The study illuminates how policymakers in the Nordic countries are affected by the European Union when crafting their own artificial intelligence policies. The European Commission profoundly influences the policymaking of member states and affiliated states through the policy strategy of policy framing. The Commission uses this soft measure to nudge member states to comply with the European Union policy framework. Second, the study shows how 'organizations matter': variation in national organizational capacities in the Nordic states contributes to variation in national policy adoption. Even though Nordic countries adopt European Union-level policy frames, their implementation is shaped by varying organizational capacities available at the national level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How are extensive internet control, surveillance and restricted online anonymity reconceptualized into virtues of effective state governance, rather than violations of civic rights? The Russian government has instrumentalized ostensibly sound legitimations – countering terrorist and extremist propaganda, combatting child pornography – to bring about a dramatic decline in internet freedom. While these policies have been widely studied, scholarship examining how the Russian government legitimates and cultivates popular support for restricting online freedoms remains scarce. This article therefore studies how restrictions of internet freedom are framed in political and media discourses. It focuses on the case of Telegram, a popular messaging application that was banned in Russia in April 2018 for its refusal to provide the FSB with access to encrypted messages in compliance with anti-terrorism legislation. It finds that media framing of the ban was more diverse than the official governmental line. While national security framing was important, the 'rule of law' frame occurred most frequently, and conspiracy framing was markedly infrequent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Resolution "Women, Peace and Security" unanimously adopted by the United Nations Security Council in 2000 fundamentally transformed discursive practices of gender equality into the fields of security, post-conflict reconstruction and peace. The twentieth anniversary was an opportunity to critically examine its impact on the gender mainstreaming of conflict, security and peace. This special issue contributes to the feminist security studies by discussing the shortcomings in the implementation of UNSCR 1325 from several research fields, including intersectionality and masculinity perspectives. After presenting the rationale and scope of the special issue, this article discusses the gender and security policy framing of the WPS Agenda, intending to conceptualise gender equality through three perspectives: the perspective of equal treatment, the women's perspective, and the gender perspective. In conclusion , the article summarises the key contributions of this special issue and suggests some avenues for further research.

Purpose – This paper aims to provide rigor and clarity to the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) policy debate in Vietnam. It is intended to serve a three-fold purpose. First, it critically examines the framing of policy objectives and the utilization of policy instruments for controlling COVID-19 in Vietnam. Second, it goes beyond policy design to consider the coordination and implementation of COVID-19 policies in Vietnam. Third, it discusses policy measures needed for post-COVID sustainable and inclusive growth, especially the sharing of the public costs of COVID-19 policies. Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs a positivist research framework that emphasizes the causal relationships between the variables under study. The method of analysis is mixed, combining both qualitative and quantitative techniques. In particular, a simple, theoretical model is constructed to evaluate the welfare effects of alternative vaccine strategies. No primary data were collected. Findings – The Vietnamese government’s dual goals of containing the pandemic and maintaining economic growth, while being reasonable, need clarification and updating. It is argued that in the longer term, there is no trade-off between saving lives and protecting the economy. The downward revision of the projected growth rate and commitment to a coherent and transparent vaccination strategy is the best way to move forward in Vietnam. The choice of vaccine rollout order involves a consideration of ethics. It is suggested that it is appropriate to vaccinate elderly people and people with underlying medical conditions first. Complementary policy measures to stimulate aggregate demand and supply need to be expanded but also more targeted. Effective coordination and implementation of COVID-19 policies remain a serious challenge for Vietnam. Finally, inclusive growth and sustainable development should take account of human capital development and distributive justice. Social implications – The paper proposes a number of policy measures which have social impact. These include the government's formal commitment to a vaccine first strategy and a relief package of essential goods to poor and disadvantaged households. Originality/value – The paper contributes positively to the current COVID-19 policy formulation by providing rigor and clarity to the framing of policy objectives and the utilization of policy instruments. While vaccination has been adopted as a national policy instrument, its design and implementation can be much improved. The paper recommends an appropriate vaccine strategy for Vietnam. It also draws attention to other dimensions of successful policies, namely, communication, coordination, implementation and distributive justice.

• In selective formalization, different informalities are treated unequally. • Digital ambitions of Estonia provided welcoming conditions for ridehailing. • Ridehailing acceptance despite its illegality rests importantly on elite informality. • Frame analysis of governmental debates reveals dominant discursive structures. • Narratives of digital future can legitimize elite informality. The contribution of the paper to the geographical literatures on informalities is to expand the work on transport informalities from transport system reforms and professionalization of informal provisions such as minibus services or taxi provisions to ridehailing, including explicit discursive framings through which formalization operates. Ridehailing platforms have entered various cities around the world extra-legally, forcing public authorities to deal with them. While there is an emerging literature discussing various aspects of ridehailing and platform economies, the literature to date has not analyzed what kinds of discursive frames facilitate the legitimation of these businesses. Analyzing legitimation through frame analysis highlights the affective forcefulness of future visions configured around technology-oriented regulation, employment provision and digitalization. The article argues that the state acceptance of sharing platforms, together with the introduction of the legal framing for them, particularly gains strength from the frame promising digital future. In such policy-framing processes, sharing platforms' extra-legal entry into the market as a form of "elite informality" becomes accepted instead of being considered illegal. This paper analyzes verbatim reports of debates regarding ridehailing legalization held at the Estonian parliament (Riigikogu) in April and September 2016. These verbatim reports represent a key event and arguably the most public part of the trajectory from Uber entering Estonia extra-legally in May 2015 to Estonia introducing the "Uber law" legalizing ridehailing in 2017. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Ghana became the first African country to take delivery of the first wave of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine from the COVAX facility. But why has this promising start of the vaccination rollout not translated into an accelerated full vaccination of the population? To answer this question, we drew on the tenets of a policy analytical framework and analysed the diverse interpretations, issue characteristics, actor power dynamics and political context of the COVID-19 vaccination process in Ghana.Methods: We conducted a rapid online review of media reports, journal articles and other documents on debates and discussions of issues related to framing of the vaccination rollout, social constructions generated around vaccines, stakeholder power dynamics and political contentions linked to the vaccination rollout. These were complemented by desk reviews of parliamentary reports.Results: The COVID-19 vaccination was mainly framed along the lines of public health, gender-centredness and universal health coverage. Vaccine acquisition and procurement were riddled with politics between the ruling government and the largest main opposition party. While the latter persistently blamed the former for engaging in political rhetoric rather than a tactical response to vaccine supply issues, the former attributed vaccine shortages to vaccine nationalism that crowded out fair distribution. The government's efforts to increase vaccination coverage to target levels were stifled when a deal with a private supplier to procure 3.4 million doses of the Sputnik V vaccine collapsed due to procurement breaches. Amidst the vaccine scarcity, the government developed a working proposal to produce vaccines locally which attracted considerable interest among pharmaceutical manufacturers, political constituents and donor partners. Regarding issue characteristics of the vaccination, hesitancy for vaccination linked to misperceptions of vaccine safety provoked politically led vaccination campaigns to induce vaccine acceptance.Conclusions: Scaling up vaccination requires political unity, cohesive frames, management of stakeholder interests and influence, and tackling contextual factors promoting vaccination hesitancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognizing the interrelatedness of water use and conceptual value of IWRM, progressive water resource management systems are moving beyond hierarchical arrangements toward more integrated networks. Increasing calls for participation recognize the value of broadened perspectives that provide both technical expertise as well as social, cultural, and administrative knowledge. Moreover, the call for evidence-based policy of '00s has been tempered by recognition of the political nature of data and science. As such, water decision-makers striving to coproduce and employ shared knowledge must grapple with integrating inputs from diverse participant groups to characterize policy problems and identify effective and feasible solutions. Participatory mandates, coordination bodies, and collaborative networks have emerged to facilitate such integration, and their effective cooperation and alignment relies upon some degree of shared purpose, rather than command and control. But guidance is limited with respect to how to accomplish such integrative aims, including how to support discussions across sectors and silos of practice in order to foster better understanding regarding the problems a policy network collectively aims to address. Motivated by observations within the discourse on water quality in the Brantas River basin in Indonesia, this research explores alternative concepts and problem structures regarding river health via Q methodology. Q methodology, an approach that uses factor analysis to explore human subjectivity, is applied to explore conceptualizations of water quality and the structures of the “water quality problem” in the Brantas. The results show that different groups of perspectives emerge regarding the concept itself, as well as characterization of the current condition of the Brantas. Surprisingly, these variant perspectives do not follow oft-cited government-business-civil society divisions. Moreover, the emergent perspectives demonstrate which aspects of the policy problem are consistent and which are contested, suggesting several starting points for early collaboration and several areas that require further research and facilitated deliberation. The results also offer participants in the collaborative network greater appreciation of the various perspectives and definitions in use, within and across organizations, when discussing water quality.

Rhetoric is a way to explain policy problem framing by recognising the practical necessity to persuade audiences in contextual situations. Modern slavery and human trafficking is a complex and emotive problem, simplified through rhetorical demands to motivate an audience of supporters. This article analyses rhetoric by 212 UK anti-trafficking and anti-slavery non-government organisations (NGOs) to uncover rhetorical practices and their effects on policy framing, supplemented by archival research to compare past and present anti-slavery oratory. Our data show NGOs use rhetoric to motivate supporters and promote a humanitarian problem frame, in opposition to a state-driven security frame. Findings confirm other research in identifying an emphasis on female victims and on sexual over labour exploitation. Past and present rhetoric are equivalent in terms of liberal, Christian values (ethos) and appeals to pathos through sympathy for victims. Historical rhetoric is distinctive in arguing for the equal human status of slaves, whereas contemporary activists argue victims are denied agency. Contemporary rhetoric represses the question of migration, whereas past rhetoric is more deliberative. Rhetoric varies with the requirements of persuasion related to contextual distance, between unlike humans in the past, but in regard to geographical distance today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study addresses the problem of defining the scope and substance of the climate adaptation policy, which operates with comprehensive objectives and engages with multiple meanings, policy tools, and sectors to allow societies to cope with the effects of climate change. Analyzing the design of Brazil's National Adaptation Plan sheds light on the main goals and tools of the country's adaptation strategy for the rural sector and its divergent policy approaches at distinct subnational levels. This study shows that the government's ambition for promoting change drove the design process by mainstreaming climate adaptation goals into well-established development agendas, but it resulted in the layering of existing sector-based instruments. The Plan became a mix of loosely coordinated and inconsistent strategies, lacking a common implementation approach. Thereby, this analysis provides insight into the politics of adaptation policies and the challenges of promoting policy integration in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has shone a spotlight on many areas of inequality. Despite its public commitment to gender equality, Australia's Morrison government has been accused of implementing economic stimulus policies in response to the pandemic that are often 'gender blind' and disadvantage women. This article examines both the Morrison government's gender equality policies and key criticisms of its economic measures. It argues that the government's claimed 'gender blindness' results not so much from an opposition to gender equality policy as from a particular neoliberal framing of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of autonomy is essential in the practice and study of gerontology and in long-term care policies. For older adults with expanding care needs, scores from tightly specified assessment instruments, which aim to measure the autonomy of service users, usually determine access to social services. These instruments emphasise functional independence in the performance of activities of daily living. In an effort to broaden the understanding of autonomy into needs assessment practice, the province of Québec (Canada) added social and relational elements into the assessment tool. In the wake of these changes, this article studies the interaction between the use of assessment instruments and the extent to which they alter how older adults define their autonomy as service users. This matters since the conceptualisation of autonomy shapes the formulation of long-term care policy problems, influencing both the demand and supply of services and the types of services that ought to be prioritised by governments. Relying on focus groups, this study shows that the functional autonomy frame dominates problem definitions, while social/relational framings are marginal. This reflects the more authoritative weight of functional autonomy within the assessment tool and contributes to the biomedicalisation of aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the world's largest fossil fuels exporter, Russia is one of the key countries for addressing global climate change. However, it has never demonstrated any significant ambitions to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This paper applies ideational research methodology to identify the structural differences in economic, political, and social normative contexts between industrialized fossil fuel importing economies and Russia that lead to the fundamental gap in motivations driving decarbonization efforts. Russia is unlikely to replicate the approach to the green transition and climate policy instruments of energy-importing countries. In order to launch decarbonization in Russia, interested stakeholders need to frame climate policies in Russia differently. Specifically, the framing must address the priority of diversification as a means to adapting the national economy to a new green landscape, the combination of diverse channels for decarbonization, the promotion of energy-efficiency, closer attention to climate-related forest projects, and linkage of climate change with other environmental problems. Moreover, considering Russia's emissions as a part of the global economic system and shifting from a simplistic national focus on GHG emissions reduction would help coordinate policies through dialogue between exporters and importers of fossil fuel energy-intensive goods, which is essential for the global movement towards a net-zero future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years many European governments reacted to the economic crisis introducing austerity measures that particularly affected Local Public Services (LPSs) through outsourcing, privatization and marketization. While several studies have analysed the logics of instruments choice also in this policy sector, the political discourses and policy frames that accompanied the tools selection for the management of LPSs in the last years have been paid limited attention in the scholarly literature. Starting from these premises, the article analyses the debate on LPSs that has developed in Italy since 2008, reconstructing the frames used by the main parties through the analysis of both electoral manifestos and press reviews of articles relevant to LPSs in three newspapers. Particular attention is paid to the 2011 referendum against the privatization of LPSs and the 2018 referendum on local public transportation management in Rome. The paper concludes that the economic crisis and subsequent transformations of party politics and participation encouraged a politicization of the issues around local public services, as well as a shift in the related policy discourse. The parties' choices and policy frames were guided mainly by a strategic logic defined in relation to the salience of the LPS issue and the competitive context.

The expansion of renewables is still dependent on appropriate policy support. Nonetheless, in the wake of the economic crisis, even pioneer European countries have begun to dismantle the set of measures implemented in the past decades. Policy dismantling in the area of renewable energy is a recent phenomenon that has attracted little attention in comparison to the study of the diffusion of support schemes. By focusing on the dismantling of renewable energy policy in Italy, this contribution helps fill this gap and highlights an important aspect of the current politics of energy transition. It shows how interactions between the political economy of the renewable energy sector, policy design, institutional constraints and external events affect policy dismantling. It also demonstrates the role of self-undermining mechanisms and framing effects in the dismantling of renewable energy policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While progress has been made recently in understanding food systems per se, much less is known about policies around those food systems. In this paper, we aim at understanding the food system policy context with the specific objective to look at policy dynamics —defined as the way policy agendas are identified, justified, and framed by decision-makers, and how they interact. Vietnam is used as a case study. Primary data were generated through face-to-face interviews complemented by an online survey. A policy framing approach was used to structure the research. The analysis reveals how the policy agenda is considered by many actors to be only partially evidence-based and highlights the extent to which the state government remains the most powerful actor in the setting of that agenda. The research also reveals the diffusion of the food safety crisis narrative beyond its original technical domain into a larger number of policy framings related to other issues of food systems, thus making it de facto the "center of gravity" of the current agenda on food systems in Vietnam. Yet, a comparison with data from other countries challenges this narrative, and reveals instead how the (legitimate) public concern about food safety is being instrumentalized by certain groups of actors to advance their own agenda. The implication of this "distorted" framing is the risk for the decision-makers to "overfocus" their attention on this short-term issue and lose sight of some other longer-term structural trends such as the emergence of obesity in Vietnamese urban population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using 'media policy silence' as a construct, this article discusses three types of policy practices that are marked by policy opacity rather than policy visibility, by the absence of formal policy or 'un-decisions' rather than decisions and by policy inertia rather than intervention. They are, respectively, first, the 'elephant in the room' type of silence that mostly refers to lacunae in policy outcomes and agendas; second, policy 'undecisions' (i.e. policy scenarios in which no formal policy decisions take place); and last, 'considered silence' that refers to government non-intervention. I will talk about these three different types of media policy silence and their relationships by drawing upon existing literature, using examples from different political and regulatory contexts, and where appropriate, reflecting on the methodological challenges that those silences pose to traditional policy research. To sum up, the article intends to identify the opposite side of the official and formal policy sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the rising climatic impacts on worldwide urbanized deltas, the Netherlands has strategically and politically framed Dutch water management as a global water solution for improving water safety and flood protection in other countries such as Vietnam. Being renowned for its water management approach, the Netherlands is particularly active in sharing water knowledge, insights, and policies internationally. This paper connects a framing perspective to policy translation studies to understand the role of language and meaning-making in the cross-border travel of policies. Adopting a framing perspective, it presents four dimensions of water policy translation concerning how policy frames are being created and interpreted – during the cross-border travel. The paper follows the process of the Dutch water management approach being 'packaged' as global water solutions and 'translated' to inform the development of the Vietnamese Mekong Delta Plan of 2013. The results show that although similar concepts, metaphors and narratives could be witnessed in this translation process, the local use and interpretation of these concepts remain challenging. Inclusive engagement, shared and comprehensive understanding, and continuous exchange and learning processes could help to improve cross-border policy-making for sustainable delta management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In English higher education, the Teaching Excellence Framework represents a very significant recent policy lever in the continued operation of a measured market in the sector. Conceived as a policy to enhance and make further transparent the quality of teaching, it utilises a variety of key measurements to establish sets of related outcomes upon which effective teaching can be assessed. Drawing upon Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence and adopting policy framing as an analytical approach, we illustrate how the Teaching Excellence Framework and its related discursive techniques are significant in (re)producing the institutional conditions which enable market policy to operate effectively. The article focuses specifically on three core pillars of the marketisation project of English higher education that are strongly affirmed: the further enactment of students as consumers and universities as producers, the related pre-occupation with graduates' employability and future returns and the uncritical application of metrics to signify institutions' performance value. We show how misrecognition operates by a market policy cloaking itself under the guise of student empowerment and quality, and call for academic and political practices that forge acts of resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of the rights for many in the LGBT community across the US along with the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court ruling has created a backlash in many states against the LGBT community. This backlash has recently been furthered by even more restrictive policy, reflected in North Carolina's HB2 act in 2016 eliminating the power of localities to provide more inclusive environments for the LGBT community through multiple policy mechanisms. The rhetoric surrounding these policies focus on the safety of women and children. The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between gender and attitudes toward discriminatory policies. What impact does this framing have on a mother's attitudes toward LGBT policies? Utilizing US individual level survey data this study evaluates whether there are gender differences regarding attitudes toward restrictive gay and lesbian policy and a change in the success of these frames from 2008 to 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like abortion, contraception, and guns, the debate over sex education policy in the United States is divisive and seems intractable. While ample policy research and analysis have focused on the former issues, less attention has been paid to the latter. This study begins to fill this gap through a thematic analysis of sixteen interviews conducted with a range of health policy and sex education experts. The study's goal is to explore conceptions of US sex education policy—contested issues, evidence use, and the narratives that influence policy formulation—in order to advance the discussion and ultimately improve sex education curricula. The author identified four common themes across these interviews: ultimate objectives, teaching approaches, views on teen sex, and limitations of evidence. These lend important insight into how experts and advocates frame the sex education debate, revealing stark areas of contestation as well as potential common ground. Such insights can inform deliberative inquiry to improve community decision making and guide collaboration among scientists, health professionals, advocates, and policymakers toward collective policy formulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Expectations concerning the future of biomedicine need practical governing and maintenance. • Data-driven medicine and innovation policy, with commercial emphasis, are becoming the key framings of personalized medicine. • The focus of promoting personalized medicine has shifted from molecular biology and tissue samples to health-related data. • As personalized medicine is today a matter of innovation policy, it is primarily defined in terms of economy and commerce. • The Finnish imaginary of personalized medicine is shaped by simultaneous and overlapping practical measures. During the past decade, in Finland and elsewhere, biomedicine and genomics-related initiatives have been organized under the sociotechnical imaginary of personalized medicine. Within this imaginary, the medical future is promoted and made up, and the activities often subtly change the very meaning of what the imaginary of personalized medicine entails. In this paper, we study the Finnish strategies and pursuits addressing the utilization of genomics to advance personalized medicine. We build our analysis on previous research on sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015) and the hype and expectations surrounding emerging technologies (Borup et al., 2006; Brown & Michael, 2003; Brown, 2003). We emphasize that the sociotechnical imaginary requires practical maintenance. In our analysis we address both rhetorical and action framings related to the making of personalized medicine and point out that activities of maintenance simultaneously pursue and reconfigure the imaginary of personalized medicine. Furthermore, our analysis shows that the focus of advocacy in personalized medicine has shifted from the promise of health to the promise of wealth as innovation policy and data-driven medicine have become the key framings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital switchover of (DSO) of terrestrial broadcasting constitutes one of the most critical moments of policy change in Europe because it offered a unique opportunity of reconceptualising public media space for the next era of communication. The promise of a plural and public service oriented broadcast policy legitimized efforts of citizens investing in digitization, provided public acceptance and approval to the changes set to terminate analogue television. This article explores the policy framing of the switchover process in the European Union. It finds that DSO was constructed around overly technical and economic frames in the policy, a strategy, which allowed building an argument of neutrality of technology and hence of the steps policy-makers were making. This construction did not address the exclusion and side-lining of the social and political consequences of free-to-air reduction. The article argues that this practice provided a low-conflict policy process led by the European Commission between 2005 and 2015 and showcased a paradox on European spectrum policy. The article further argues that the governance of digitalization of Europe's screens presents a case of highly complex low-salience regulatory policy, which means muted participation of citizens and limited public debate. Ultimately, this strategy undermines democratic practice and meaningful transparency in European policy-making as it eliminates deliberations on what constitutes public interest in the 21st media context. The analyses of communication DSO policy as a matter of polity situate well with European media governance scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the Australian Government's 'Universal Access' policy in the early childhood education sector. Using data from selected policy texts, and drawing on interpretive policy analysis, the paper specifically examines rationales underlying the Universal Access agenda and instruments put in place to operationalize it and problematizes the framing of the equity agenda. The findings show that economic, educational and social goals inform the policy initiative; and targeted funding, teacher professionalization and performance monitoring serve as instruments in the enactment of the initiatives. A closer analysis of the texts also reveals that the Universal Access agenda is characterized by discursive shifts in the framing of equity goals, issue-omissions, contradictions of agendas, and inconsistencies of categories of disadvantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]