Analyzing the association of policy narratives with problem tractability in the implementation of EU decisions: Evidence from the phytosanitary policy area

The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) suggests that narratives can be employed to define and contest policy problems. Yet, few NPF studies have explicitly addressed the narrative portrayal of problem intractability. What role do narratives play in a situation of uncertainty about the causes and solutions of the problem, when strong divergences regarding the values and interests of the policy actors exist? The article anchors the NPF to the literatures on problem definition and implementation to advance two propositions about (a) how differences in the use of narrative elements can be suggestive of the degree of problem (in-)tractability; and (b) whether other elements of tractability, namely the presence of a valid causal theory, are associated with the usage of narrative strategies. I test the propositions by analyzing media commentaries surrounding the implementation of European decisions to tackle a tree-killing epidemic in Italy. The findings suggest that narratives can helpfully illustrate the intractability inherent in the policy debate. However, narratives can also develop independently of factors that the implementation literature understands as conducive to lowering intractability, namely knowledge accumulation. The NPF may represent a promising alternative to understand policy implementation processes.     

What's the grand story? A macro-narrative analytical model and the case of Swiss child and adult protection policy

This paper expands on the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) by adding a theoretical and empirical exploration into macrolevel narratives. Existing NPF research largely neglects macrolevel narratives, which prevents the NPF from developing its full power. The main contributions of this paper are threefold: (1) It provides a definition of macrolevel narratives by conceptualizing them as the “story form” of a policy paradigm. (2) It proposes a model and an empirical approach, which may lay the foundation for a standard macrolevel NPF approach. (3) It contributes to the NPF's aim of connecting the macro and meso level. The paper tests the model in a comparative multi-method design applied to the Swiss child and adult protection policy. The findings show that macrolevel NPF analysis helps understand where mesolevel policy debates come from, namely from an underlying paradigm and its effects on institutions and culture that enable and constrain macrolevel narratives.     

The role of policy narrators during crisis: A micro-level analysis of the sourcing,synthesizing, and sharing of policy narratives in rural Texas

How do policymakers respond to crises? The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) answers this question by focusing on the contest over policy narratives. This paper focuses on the individuals constructing those policy narratives, conceptualizing them as policy narrators. Using a case study approach, we analyze seven counties located in a major oil and gas formation in Texas, which in early 2020 faced both an oil bust and the onset of COVID-19. We explore four sets of propositions about how policy narrators source, synthesize, and share their policy narratives. We find that while their narratives vary, the structure of those narratives is similar; their backgrounds shape how they source narratives, and they tailor their levels of narrative breach to the action (or inaction) they hope for. They avoid casting other local actors as villains, place their audience as the hero, and situate themselves as either supporting or a member of that audience, stressing their common ties. From these findings, we put forward a working definition of policy narrators, identify how they fit into the NPF, and discuss how they relate to other types of policy actors, including policy entrepreneurs.     

Shifting narrative strategies: How monument advocates change their stories in response to conflict over time

This paper expands the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) by employing an exploratory case study approach to examine the construction of narratives temporally. A large-N Twitter dataset concerning the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments controversy is utilized to examine the question: how does the use of narrative strategies change over time? Through the application of change-point analysis, we determine time points of significant shifts towards use of the devil-angel shift, scope of the conflict, and causal mechanism strategies. Overall, we find that organizations do not vary their use of narrative strategies over the course of a policy conflict but instead demonstrate discrete changes in response to certain policy events. Based on our findings, we conclude with suggestions for refining and expanding NPF hypotheses. Specifically, we recommend a more contextual analysis of shifts in narrative strategy use in response to specific events over time.     

An Angel on the Wind: How Heroic Policy Narratives Shape Policy Realities

Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) is a new and maturing theory of the policy process that takes a systematic, scientific approach to understanding the social construction of policy realities. As such, NPF serves as a bridge between postpositivists, who assert that public policymaking is contextualized through narratives and social construction, and positivists, who contend that legitimacy is grounded in falsifiable claims. The central questions of NPF are: What is the empirical role of policy narratives in the policy process and do policy narratives influence policy outcomes? First, the contributions of NPF scholarship at three levels of analysis—micro, meso, and macro—are examined. Next, necessary conditions of a policy narrative are specified, accompanied by detailed discussion of the narrative components: narrative elements, narrative strategies, and policy beliefs. Finally, an empirical illustration of NPF—a case study of Cape Wind's proposal to install wind turbines off Nantucket—is presented. Although intercoalitional differences have long been studied in the NPF scholarship, this is the first study to examine intracoalitional cohesion or the extent to which a coalition tells the same story across narrative elements, narrative strategies, and policy beliefs. NPF is a new approach to the study of the policy process that offers empirical pathways to better speculating the role of narrative in the policy process.     

Narrative strategies in a nondemocratic setting: Moscow’s urban policy debates

The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) explains the role of narratives in policy processes. The NPF was developed for democratic contexts and has not been systematically applied in a nondemocratic setting. This study fills this gap with an empirical analysis of narrative strategies used by governmental and oppositional actors in urban policy debates in Moscow. Results show how governmental actors consistently use angel shifts, contain issues, and avoid using causal mechanisms, while actors opposing governmental policy use devil shifts, expand issues, and use intentional causal mechanisms. The findings suggest that narrative strategies differ depending on whether policy actors seek to promote policy reforms or draw attention to problems. We argue that policy actors’ objectives are a well-suited predictor for narrative strategies in both democratic and nondemocratic contexts.     

Policy Narratives and Policy Processes

The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) has influenced a generation of policy scholars with its emphasis on causal drivers, testable hypotheses, and falsification. Until recently, the role of policy narratives has been largely neglected in ACF literature partially because much of that work has operated outside of traditional social science principles, such as falsification. Yet emerging literature under the rubric of Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) demonstrates how the role of policy narratives in policy processes is studied using the same rigorous social science standards initially set forth by Paul A. Sabatier. The NPF identifies theories specifying narrative elements and strategies that are likely useful to ACF researchers as classes of variables that have yet to be integrated. Examining this proposition, we provide seven hypotheses related to critical ACF concepts including advocacy coalitions and policy beliefs, policy learning, public opinion, and strategy. Our goal is to stay within the scientific, theoretical, and methodological tradition of the ACF and show how NPF's empirical, hypotheses, and causal driven work on policy narratives identifies theories applicable to ACF research while also offering an independent framework capable of explaining the policy process through the power of policy narratives. In doing so, we believe both ACF and NPF scholarship can contribute to the advancement of our understanding of the policy process.     

More than just experts for hire: A conceptualization of the roles of consultants in public policy formulation

Consultants are increasingly a part of public policy formulation, and their policy involvement draws extensive interest in research and public debate. However, there is a gap in how we think about their formulation role: they are often conceptualized as a type of expert, while their actual interaction with and contribution to policy formulation is much more varied. This paper develops a conceptualization of consultants' formulation roles. It demonstrates that rather than just informing policy formulation, consultants take multiple roles and interact with policymaking and makers in multiple ways. Using a policy network/subsystem distinction and a substance/process distinction as the main axes for analysis, the paper develops four role categories: (1) experts and knowledge brokers, in which consultants provide policy advice and analysis; (2) seeing for the government, in which they construct a picture of the policy field; (3) legitimizers and validators, in which they provide symbolic capital to policy; and (4) channels for stakeholders' policy preferences, in which they manage deliberation and synthesize actors' policy preferences. The paper provides much-needed clarity on how consultants engage with policy formulation and policymakers and forwards our understanding of how consultants exert their policy influence.     

Explaining Advocacy Coalition Change with Policy Feedback

Despite the prominence of exogenous factors in theories of policy change, the precise mechanisms that link such factors to policy change remain elusive: The effects of exogenous factors on the politics underlying policy change are not sufficiently conceptualized and empirically analyzed. To address this gap, we propose to distinguish between truly exogenous factors and policy outcomes to better understand policy change. Specifically, we combine the Advocacy Coalition Framework with policy feedback theory to conceptualize a complete feedback loop among policy, policy outcomes, and subsequent politics. Aiming at theory-building, we use policy feedback mechanisms to explain why advocacy coalitions change over time. Empirically, we conduct a longitudinal single case study on policy-induced technological change in the German energy subsystem, an extreme case of policy outcomes, from 1983 to 2013. First, using discourse network analysis, we identify four patterns of actor movements, explaining coalition decline and growth. Second, using process tracing, we detect four policy feedback mechanisms explaining these four actor movements. With this inductive mixed-methods approach, we build a conceptual framework in which policy outcomes affect subsequent politics through feedback mechanisms. We develop propositions on how coalition change and feedback mechanisms explain four ideal-typical trajectories of policy change.     

Policy coordination and selective corruption control in China

In autocracies facing widespread corruption, the allocation of the scant attention available for fighting corruption strongly affects corruption control. Although research has found that authoritarian regimes tend to fight corruption selectively, it is unknown whether and how autocracies allocate attention across different policy areas to combat corruption. We propose that single-party authoritarian regimes can steer anticorruption attention to the policy domains prioritized by the central authority through the mechanism of cross-organizational policy coordination. Using original datasets compiled from Chinese governmental and procuratorial policy papers from 1998 to 2016, we demonstrate that Chinese prosecutors direct anticorruption attention to the policy domains accentuated in the central government's major reforms. Our field interviews support this finding and reveal possible disruption of anticorruption efforts in policy domains falling off the central government's top list. Thus, we extend the research on political influence over anticorruption agencies and show that single-party regimes can instrumentalize anticorruption to serve the government's policy agenda, driving the allocation of limited anticorruption attention across policy areas.     

How racialized policy contact shapes the social constructions of policy targets

Policy feedback scholars argue the relationship between policy and politics is dynamic and reciprocal. For instance, policies “make citizens,” teaching the public who deserves positive government treatment and who does not. Furthermore, individual experiences with policy shape participation and beliefs about government, which shapes future policy. But few scholars have examined how experiences with a law shape attitudes toward those targeted by policy. We use a survey of 3000 respondents on MTurk (including an over-sample of people of color) to show how direct and indirect experience with policy shapes social constructions of politically relevant groups. Specifically, we examine how direct (personal) and indirect (via someone they know well) experience with two policy areas (criminal justice and social welfare) shape perceptions of the targets of criminal justice and welfare policy. We find the effect of policy contact is racialized; policy contact has a greater effect on white respondents compared to Black respondents. But despite this contact, whites' attitudes about groups' deservingness remain lower than those of their Black counterparts.     

Taking perspective of the stories we tell about transgender rights: The narrative policy framework

Our project uses the narrative policy framework (NPF) to explore narrative effects on attitudes about transgender rights. The framework focuses on the stories that are told about public policy. As opposed to conceptualizing communications as informational, NPF suggests that getting lost in the story is primary for attitude change. We also incorporate a perspective taking exercise to examine its effects on individual attitudes. Using an experiment on 1784 American adults, we found that individuals who received the inclusive transgender policy narrative by either watching or reading the narrative held views more supportive of transgender rights, with the effect greater for watching than reading. Those who experienced greater narrative transportation, being more lost in the story, reported more supportive attitudes. We further find that those with traits that lead them to become more imaginatively involved in stories occasionally are more greatly affected by watching policy narratives than those who are less imaginatively involved. However, perspective taking did not influence attitudes and weakened the treatment effects of the narratives. Our findings suggest stories can affect policy attitudes and beliefs, which may be conceptually distinct from traditional framing-based accounts and implies distinctive causal mechanisms that result in attitude change.     

Operationalizing social equity in public policy design: A comparative analysis of solar equity policies in the United States

While it is widely recognized that energy injustices are prevalent in the clean energy transition process, there has been limited research attention on policy efforts aiming to mitigate these inequities. In this paper, we use solar equity policies as an empirical case study to understand how social equity considerations are conceptualized and operationalized in energy policy content. We build upon the policy design literature and code institutional statements of 54 solar equity policies adopted between 2001 and 2021 in the United States. In our comparative analysis, we focus on three levels of policy design elements that can be directly observed in written policy language: macro-policy goal construction, meso-policy instrument choices, and micro-level policy settings and calibrations. We find that the policy goal of energy justice is multifaceted, with a great emphasis on solar energy accessibility and provision of economic benefits and security for disadvantaged communities. There is a dominant preference by policymakers to use redistributive policies and community solar programs to advance energy justice-related goals. Solar equity policy instruments on-the-ground measures have also been calibrated to target specific disadvantaged populations in the energy system, which focus mostly on income-based vulnerability.     

Sharpening Advocacy Coalitions

The concept of “advocacy coalitions” is the bedrock of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), one of the most established and successful approaches for understanding policy processes across the globe. This article revisits and sharpens the conceptual definition of advocacy coalitions. We summarize the lessons from its theoretical emphases under the ACF and specify its five attributes (policy actors, shared beliefs, coordination, resources, and stability). Through this specification, we identify the ideal coalition type and several coalition subtypes. We then clarify and make a distinction between how we think about coalitions as a concept and how we approach coalitions empirically. This article sharpens the lens for describing and explaining coalitions toward better observations, theorizing, and measurements. It ends with next steps for further deepening and broadening knowledge about advocacy coalitions.     

The Intersection of Narrative Policy Analysis and Policy Change Theory

Narrative policy analysis and policy change theory rarely intersect in the literature. This research proposes an integration of these approaches through an empirical analysis of the narrative political strategies of two interest groups involved in policy debate and change over an eight‐year period in the Greater Yellowstone Area. Three research questions are explored: (i) Is it possible to reconcile these seemingly disparate approaches? (ii) Do policy narrative strategies explain how interest groups expand or contain policy issues despite divergent core policy beliefs? (3) How does this new method of analysis add to the literature? One hundred and five documents from the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and the Blue Ribbon Coalition were content analyzed for policy narrative strategies: identification of winners and losers, diffusion or concentration of costs and benefits, and use of condensation symbols, policy surrogates, and science. Five of seven hypotheses were confirmed while controlling for presidential administration and technical expertise. The results indicate that interest groups do use distinctive narrative strategies in the turbulent policy environment.     

The Narrative Uses of Evidence

When scientific evidence is used in policy controversies, it is always embedded in narrative stories. The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) is an empirical framework used to study the role of narratives in public policy. While the NPF has considered the relationship between evidence and narratives from different angles, it has not used a consistent approach in examining how evidence is embedded in narratives. This article develops a categorization of narrative uses of evidence. A narrative use of evidence is defined by the different roles that evidence plays in the plot of a narrative depending on which narrative element is addressed by a given piece of evidence. To distinguish different narrative uses of evidence, the article examines how competing coalitions use the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study in Swiss direct‐democratic campaigns on school policy. Quantitative and qualitative content analyses of newspaper articles and governmental documents show how evidence may relate to all main narrative elements and may play different roles in the plot of a narrative. The findings demonstrate significant differences in the narrative uses of PISA between coalitions related to the story types and narrative strategies that each coalition uses. Finally, the implications for future NPF research are discussed.     

The executive lawmaking agenda: Political parties,prime ministers,and policy change in Australia

In Westminster systems, governments enjoy a privileged position in the lawmaking process that they can use to deliver on their campaign promises and achieve their policy goals. What policy areas do governments seek to affect through lawmaking? How stable is the executive lawmaking agenda? How responsive is that agenda to changes triggered by elections or by transitions in prime minister? This study uses a dataset of 3982 Australian bills introduced between 2000 and 2017 to answer these questions. While it finds considerable stability in the policy content of executive lawmaking agendas, the analysis also indicates that Australia's executive lawmaking agenda is more responsive to changes in prime minister than to changes in the party in power. As the first application of the comparative policy agendas approaches to government bills in Australia, this article offers new insights into executive lawmaking priorities during an especially turbulent period in Australian politics.     

Mixed messages & bounded rationality: The perverse consequences of real ID for immigration policy

Policies concerning undocumented immigrants are inevitably ambivalent, creating uncertainty and confusion in the implementation process. We identify a clear example of this ambivalence —U.S. law setting standards for determining the credibility of asylum seekers—that resulted in an increase in asylum grants despite policymakers' intention to make it harder for individuals to obtain the status. We argue that this law, The REAL ID Act of 2005, sent mixed messages to immigration judges (IJs), street-level bureaucrats who implement immigration policy. It increased IJ discretion, but set vague limits. We theorize that IJs, behaving in a bounded rationality framework, use their professional legal training as a short-cut and look primarily to the courts for guidance. Our evidence supports our argument. After the passage of the REAL ID Act, IJ decision-making is more closely aligned with the preferences of their political and legal principals, and, in the final score, the federal circuit courts are the winners.     

Angels versus Devils: The Portrayal of Characters in the Gun Policy Debate

This research examines the role of the devil shift and angel shift in interest group rhetoric using the case of gun policy. The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) suggests that the devil shift—whereby political actors characterize their opponents as more malicious and powerful than they actually are—is common in intractable policy debates. Through an analysis of e‐mails and press releases by two gun control organizations and two gun rights organizations, I examine how groups portray themselves and their opponents. I identify two dimensions relevant to these portrayals: (1) whether a character in a policy narrative is portrayed as good or evil, and (2) whether a character is portrayed as strong or weak. The findings indicate that while the devil shift is present, the angel shift—that is, the glorification of one's own coalition—is more common in gun policy groups' communications. Two alternative characterizations, which I call the angel in distress and the devil diminished, are also present. The use of these character portrayals varies significantly across political coalitions and as a function of communication purposes. The results suggest a need to reconceptualize character portrayals to better understand how they operate as narrative strategies in the NPF.     

How street-level dilemmas and politics shape divergence: The accountability regimes framework

Hierarchical accountability often proves insufficient to control street-level implementation, where complex, informal accountability relations prevail and tasks must be prioritized. However, scholars lack a theoretical model of how accountability relations affect implementation behaviors that are inconsistent with policy. By extending the Accountability Regimes Framework (ARF), this paper explains how multiple competing subjective street-level accountabilities translate into policy divergence. The anti-terrorism “Prevent Duty” policy in the United Kingdom requires university lecturers to report any student they suspect may be undergoing a process of radicalization. We ask: what perceived street-level accountabilities and dilemmas does this politically contested policy imply for lecturers, and how do they affect divergence? An online survey of British lecturers (N = 809), combined with 35 qualitative follow-up interviews, reveals that accountability dilemmas trigger policy divergence. The ARF models how street-level bureaucrats become informal policymakers in the political system when rules clash with their roles as professionals, citizen-agents, or “political animals.”