Studies of framing in the EU political system are still a rarity and they suffer from a lack of systematic empirical analysis. Addressing this gap, we ask if institutional and policy contexts intertwined with the strategic side of framing can explain the number and types of frames employed by different stakeholders. We draw on framing theory, policy analysis and a conception of the European Union as a multilevel system to develop our arguments about the impact of contexts and strategy on the framing dynamics in EU financial market regulation and environmental policy. We use a computer assisted manual content analysis and develop a fourfold typology of frames to study the frames that were prevalent in the debates on four EU policy proposals at the EU level and in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The main empirical finding is that both contexts and strategies exert a significant impact on the number and types of frames in EU policy debates. In conceptual terms, the article contributes to developing more fine-grained tools for studying frames and their underlying dimensions.Key words: framing, context, strategic action, interest groups, EU multilevel political system Framing theory suggests that since every policy issue has multiple potential dimensions, framing -selecting and emphasizing particular aspects of an issue -is an important tool for policy actors (Daviter 2009;Baumgartner and Mahoney 2008). Through framing, policy actors can play a crucial independent role in public policy debates and impact on their outcomes (Baumgartner and Jones 1993). While commonly accepted in American political science, this phenomenon is still under-researched in EU studies (exceptions are Daviter 2009;Klüver, Mahoney, Opper 2015). We know rather little about the emergence and variation of frames in the EU, especially with regard to the contextual factors that impact on these frames. The lack is surprising in two respects. On the one hand, the argumentative turn in policy analysis highlighted the centrality of arguments -and therefore frames -'in all stages of the policy process' (Majone 1989: 1). On the other hand, scholars rooted in different schools of thought agree that the institutional contexts of political systems filter the arguments, problems and solutions that find entry into the political process (see for example:Schattschneider 1960: 30).Why can European Union (EU) studies in particular benefit from a framing perspective? The EU policymaking system is characterised by contested competencies and competing constituencies. It is frequently difficult to predict how key actors will align on a given issue and which cleavages will matter most in determining outcomes (Peterson 2001). In this context, frames do not only help to make sense of 'amorphous, ill-defined problematic situation [s]' (Dudley/Richardson 1999: 226), but are also at the centre of the political conflict because they can 'empower certain actors over other actors ' (Harcourt 1998: 370). Studying framing can therefore improve...
Framing plays an important role in public policy. Interest groups strategically highlight some aspects of a policy proposal while downplaying others in order to steer the policy debate in a favorable direction. Despite the importance of framing, we still know relatively little about the framing strategies of interest groups due to methodological difficulties that have prevented scholars from systematically studying interest group framing across a large number of interest groups and multiple policy debates. This article therefore provides an overview of three novel research methods that allow researchers to systematically measure interest group frames. More specifically, this article introduces a word-based quantitative text analysis technique, a manual, computer-assisted content analysis approach and face-to-face interviews designed to systematically identify interest group frames. The results generated by all three techniques are compared on the basis of a case study of interest group framing in an environmental policy debate in the European Union.
The introductory article to the special issue highlights the progression of comparative and EU interest group studies towards a field characterized by the systematic empirical testing of propositions derived from mid-range theories. Locating the special issue in this research field it argues that the study of national interest organizations in EU policy-making sheds light on a theoretically and empirically neglected research subject. It further demonstrates that the individual articles present novel developments in the study of political alignments among interest groups and political institutions, the Europeanization of domestic interest organizations, and the question of bias in interest group populations. Thereafter, it gives an overview of the individual contributions. Finally, it indicates that the special issue does not only contribute to the comparative study of interest groups, but also to the analysis of EU policy-making, multilevel governance, and political representation in the EU.
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