CALL FOR PAPER PROPOSALS FOR A CONFERENCE PANEL
The following panel has been accepted for the 6th meeting of the
Interpretive Policy Analysis Conference that will take place in
Cardiff, Wales, 23–25 June 2011.
The deadline for proposals for papers to be presented on this panel is
31 January 2011. Abstracts should be submitted to the panel chair:
maartje.vanlieshout@???
General information about the conference is available at
www.ipa-2011.cardiff.ac.uk
Panel 28: Interactional framing in policy controversies
Chairs: Maartje van Lieshout and Art Dewulf, Public Administration and
Policy Group, Wageningen University, maartje.vanlieshout@???
There is a lot of research on how people understand, perceive or frame
policy issues (e.g. flood risk, climate change, abortion, migration)
in diverging ways. In multi-actor governance situations, where a broad
range of government, business and civil society actors influence a
policy domain, this frame diversity has several implications. This
panel starts with the premise that the framing of an issue is the
result of processes of interaction and negotiations between different
actors and at the same time is the input for these processes. Most
theories about framing and reframing talk about how people see
different aspects of a situation, based on their individual views and
mental models. But to understand how actors can collaborate
effectively despite these differences and thanks to these differences,
we need to look at how people portray the situation for each other. An
interactional approach to framing focuses on how people react to each
other’s on-going framing and the way they use language to frame the
issues. Instead of focusing on what’s going on ‘between the ears’, we
try to better understand what is going on ‘between the noses’ of
people. This draws the attention to the concrete interactions where
actors make sense of problems and possible solutions, and how they
affect each other's frames in and through a developing relationship.
The papers will address interactional framing by examining questions
such as: How does the process of framing in interaction work? Which
factors of successful framing can be distinguished? What is the impact
of interactional framing processes on the outcomes of policy
controversies? While they all focus on processes of framing in
interaction, the papers in this panel address different policy
themes-environmental problems, social problems, and crisis management-
and different policy processes – informal meetings, formal
(administrative) meetings, and public deliberation. By examining these
different contexts, we hope to deepen our understanding of
interactional framing processes.
To enhance the deliberative quality of the discussion, we propose that
each panellist will present one paper from a different panellist.
Panellists will present the papers to each other in an inner circle,
begin a discussion amongst themselves, then open the conversation to
the broader audience.
