frame-critical policy analysis and frame-reflective policy practice

Frame-Critical Policy Analysis and Frame- Reflective Policy Practice 1

Martin Rein and Donald Sch6n

Our primary purpose in this article is to explore some of the issues, practical and conceptual, that arise in the attempt to study and cope with public policy controversies. We have organized the article into four sections. The first considers what problems a frame-critical approach seeks to address and explores, in particular, why social science methods seem unable to contribute to the resolution of public controversies. The second section asks what "frames" are and why they are critical to the study of controver- s~ Section three gives an overview of the elements in a frame-critical policy analysis and of the relationships between it and frame-reflective policy practice. In conclusion, section four examines the main issues that need to be addressed in analyzing and coping with policy controversies.

The Limits of Social Science and the Study of Policy Cont roversy

We focus on public controversies that are intractable in the sense that social science is no t only unable to resolve the d ispute bu t tends to exacer- bate it by p rov id ing informat ion that can be used in oppos ing ways by the sponsors of compet ing frames. We illustrate this p h e n o m e n o n by exploring h o w three persis tent issues in the social sciences give rise to the problem of mul t ip le perspectives.

We d raw our first example from economics, the mos t consensual of all social science disciplines. Agreement in economics rests largely on the view

Martin Rein is Professor of Social Policy at MIT in the Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. His most recent books are Social Benefits after Communism: The Role of Enterprise (Cambridge University Press), and Enterprise and the Welfare State (Edward Elgar Press). Both books will appear at the end of 1996. He has also published, with Donald Sch6n, Frame-Reflection: Exploring New Approaches to the Resolution of Policy Controversies (Basic Books). Donald Sch6n is a Ford Professor Emeritus and Senior Lecturer at MIT in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. An educator and industrial consultant, a former government administrator and a former president of a non-profit social research consulting organization, Dr. Sch6n has worked as a researcher and practitioner on problems of technological innovation, organizational learning and pro- fessional effectiveness and education. His m o s t recent books include Educating the Reflective Practitio- ner (1987); The Reflective Turn (ed.) (1991); Frame Reflection: Exploring New Approaches to the Resolution of Policy Controversies (with Martin Rein); Essays Provoked by the Work of Albert O. Hirschman (ed), (Brookings Institution Press, 1994); and Organizational Learning Ih Practice, Theory, Method (with Chris Argyris, Addison-Wesley Press, 1996).

Knowledge and Policy: The International Journal of Knowledge Transfer and Utilization, Spring 1996, Vol. 9, Number 1, pp. 85-104.

86 Knowledge and Policy / Spring 1996

that there is a single pr ice/quant i ty combination which will be in equilibrium. One observes the equilibrium in markets when supply and demand intersect at a given price. This means that there is a unique equilibrium which permits the analyst to predict the likelihood of a given outcome and to specify what will happen if elements of the model change. Obviously, one does not want a theory to predict that anything can happen. It is almost universally believed that markets, in general and under normal conditions, behave as if an equilibrium of supply and demand is possible.

A good predictive model is one that has a unique solution. What needs to be avoided, then, is the case of multiple equilibria, where several equally plausible solutions are possible and there is no theory to guide in selecting one rather than another. This type of situation tends to occur when relationships are formally nonlinear, but, more relevant to our purposes, when there is path dependency, the solution depending on the path that is fol- lowed. In such cases, contrary to economists ' assumptions about predic- tion under normal market conditions, history matters. For example, if unders tanding the future of economic growth in Eastern Europe depends upon the initial condition that held in each member country after the fall of Communism, then no unique solution is available, and the specter of multiple equilibria arises. When the historical starting condition matters, pre- diction is elusive. And in virtually all the social sciences, path-dependent models and multiple theories are the norm.

The problem of multiplism arises in other situations as well. In our second example, we consider what happens when a limited number of facts are consistent with several conflicting theories. The Bell curve controversy in the United States is a good case in point. By and large, there is agreement about the fact that African Americans score about 10 percent lower than other groups, on average, on standardized IQ tests; the disagreement centers on plausible explanations for the phenomenon and on their various implications for social policy.

An analogous case is explored in a thoughtful essay on growth theory by Paul M. Romer. He offers two different ways of explaining economic growth. Economic growth can be seen, he argues, as the outcome of processes that occur within an economic system, or as arising from external forces, the latter suggesting that in the long run rates of economic growth among countries will converge. Romer describes his review of this literature as follows:

There are descriptions of the scholarly equivalent to creation myths, simple stories that economists tell themselves and each other to give meaning and structure to their current research efforts. Understanding the differences between these stories matters because they teach different lessons about the relative importance of theoretical and empirical work in economic analysis and they suggest different directions for future work on growth .... what is striking is how little disagreement there is about the facts. The differences concern the inferences about models that we should draw from the facts.., many different inferences are consistent with the same regression statistics .... The story starts

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with the emergence of new data. These present anomalies that lead to new theoretical models, some of which differ markedly from previous, well-accepted models. Then a more conservative interpretation emerges that accommodates the new evidence and preserves much of the structure of the old body of theor~ In the end, we have refined the set of alternatives somewhat, but seem to be left in about the same position where we started, with too many theories that are consistent with the same small number of facts. (1994)

Romer ' s analysis points to the importance of the predicament of having to choose among multiple perspectives or theories, one of the central issues in science. Multiple theories are "consistent wi th the same small number of facts," and there is no crucial experiment by which to discriminate among contending theories. Under these conditions, empirical work can- not resolve the issue of theory choice. Yet, the choice of the lens, the perspective, the theory from which to interpret reality is crucial not only for the choice of a research agenda, but for its implications for policy and practice. And here, if Romer is right, we must resort to "myths" and "simple stories."

For our third example, we consider the idea of incommensurability, which arises when different conceptual schemes exist but translation across them is not possible. Donald Davidson defines conceptual schemes as:

Ways of organizing experience. They are systems of categories that give form to the data of sensation; they are points of view from which individuals, cul- tures, or periods survey the passing scene...the beliefs, desires, hopes and bits of knowledge that characterize one person have no true counterparts for the subscriber to another scheme. Reality itself is relative to a scheme. 2

Thomas Kuhn has pushed this idea further wi th his view that under different scientific conditions investigators may create different paradigms, wi th the result that they "live in different worlds." In other words, different observers of a unified wor ld come to view it through incommensurable systems of concepts. One wor ld is seen from different perspectives. As Davidson observes, "meaning, as we might loosely use the word, is contaminated by theor~ by wha t is held to be true" (1985). In Kuhn 's view, then, speakers of different languages do not share a common conceptual scheme that could enable them to translate from one language to another, or to arrive at consensual choice among contending theories by resort to a crucial experiment. Kuhn asserts: "In the transition from one theory to the next, words change their meanings or conditions of applicability in subtle ways.. .successive theories are thus, we sa~ ' incommensurable '" (Davidson, 1985).

Taken together, the problems of multiple equilibria, theoretical pluralism, and incommensurabil i ty help to make unders tandable w h y social science is l imited in its ability to engage a politically and normatively charged controversy and contribute to its resolution.


Multiplism as a Problem

Is multiplism in the policy realm something that we should worry about? We argue that it is. We see it as a threat to the viability of social inquiry, as much in the realm of public policy as in that of science. Public polic~ rather than science, is our focus here. In Frame Reflection, we argued, as many others have also done, that the viability of liberal democracy depends on the capability of individuals and institutions somehow to work out agreements on courses of decision and action in the policy realm, in the face of their different and contending interests and the divergent views of the world that underlie those interests.

A frame-reflective approach is intended to deal frontally with the problem of multiplism. It does so by taking the multiple frames and frame contests that arise in controversies as objects of analysis. It tries to do this without yielding to flabby relativism, where one story is presumed to be as good as any other. Moreover, a frame-reflective approach deals both with the academic controversies that arise in policy analysis and with the situated controversies that arise in policy practice. It deals with the former through frame-critical policy analysis and with the latter through frame-reflective policy practice. Just what these approaches are, and how they may be pro- ductively related to one another, is the principal focus of this article.

A first step in the exploration of the frame-reflective approach to policy controversy is to clarify the meaning of a "frame."

What Is a Frame?

Four Ways of Looking at Frames

We recognize four different ways of looking at a frame. These are distinct but mutually compatible images, rather than competing conceptions. A frame can be seen as a scaffolding (an inner structure), a boundary that sets off phenomena from their contexts (like picture frames), a cognitive/ appreciative schema of interpretation (an idea that one finds in Piaget, Vickers, Bartlett, as well as Davidson, whom we quote), or a generic diagnostic/prescriptive story (as in our view of problem framing, and also in the writings of Paul Ricoeur and other hermeneuticists).

These images all capture important features and functions of frames, albeit different ones. They all rest on a common insight: there is a less visible foundation--an "assumptional basis ' -- that lies beneath the more visible surface of language or behavior, determining its boundaries and giving it coherence. We elaborate briefly on each of these images.

The first idea of a frame views it as having an underlying structure which is sufficiently strong and stable to support an edifice. Thus, a house has a frame even if it is not visible from the outside. The idea of structure is the central theme which implies a degree of regularity, and, hence, a lack of adaptability to events as they unfold over time. It is often cheaper to de- molish a housing project and start again than it is to rehabilitate it while keeping its basic structure.

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The second image of a frame is that of setting a boundary; as in framing a picture. Here, one imposes a given, setting a boundary within which one is allowed to focus on what is inside as distinct from what is outside. Erving Goffman's view of a frame is based on this image (1974). He conjures up a continuous stream of events in everyday life which may be frozen at a point in time in order to analyze the events that exist within. A segment of a stream of events is then framed, so that what lies inside the frame can be analyzed and set off from what surrounds it.

A third image of a frame is that of a schema of interpretation, as in Davidson's discussion of conceptual schemata. In the words of Snow and his co-authors, such a schema enables individuals "to locate, perceive, identify, and label occurrences within their life space and their world at large. By rendering events or occurrences meaningful, frames function to orga- nize experience and guide action," whether individual or collective (1986).

A fourth way of looking at and describing frames, which we have adopted, treats frames as strong and generic narratives that guide both analysis and action in practical situations. Such narratives are diagnostic/ prescriptive stories that tell, within a given issue terrain, what needs fixing and how it might be fixed. When we speak of frames as "strong narratives," we want to stress that we are talking about generic narratives, such as the narrative of a fragmented whole object that needs to be restored to its original shape (as in "coordination of services" or "continuity of care"), or the narrative of a disease that requires cure or quarantine (as in the early debates over urban renewal). Our narrative frames are the generic story lines that underlie the particular problem-setting stories one finds in any particular policy controversy.

These generic story lines give coherence to the analysis of issues in a policy domain, often through reliance on a unifying metaphor which enables the frame holder to make a graceful normative leap from is to ought. Such generic narratives offer an integrated account of a policy issue. Frames try to "hitch on" to norms which resonate broader culture themes in society. This helps to explain the power that some frames exert within a policy arena.

In any particular frame-narrative, it is useful to identify two kinds of elements: the "framing devices," as William Gamson calls them, that suggest how to think about an issue; and the "reasoning devices" that suggest what should be done about the issue. Gamson describes these elements as metaphors, exemplars, catch-phrases, depictions, icons, visual "images" and other symbolic devices, which can be clustered together to comprise a "signature matrix" that enables an analyst to identify the "core package" inherent in a narrative (1983). 3

The strength of narrative frames is that the story line is more capable incorporating and adapting changing events. They also focus on processes which connect themes to each other.

Let us consider further the relationship between frame as narrative and frame as schema of interpretation. Davidson, in an effort to show that a language of translation across presumed incommensurable conceptual schemes is possible, offers an insight which is also central to our view of


frames. He distinguishes between a schema as an idea of "organizing experience" and the idea of "coping with experience." Coping with things puts the emphasis on "facing the tribunal of experience," not merely on organizing experience into categories (Davidson, 1985:141).

Our narrative frames, like Davidson's conceptual schemata, are about facing and coping with and, by implication, about actions and the processes that make action possible. This point is further developed in a forthcoming book by Cohen and Fung. They observe that "much contemporary political philosophy is devoted to stating, clarifying, and justifying political norms,.., examining the political morality of public policy rather than to explore the institutional implications of political principles." In the choice between abstract principle and concrete institutional forms, Cohen and Fung assert their strong view that "political theory must incorporate de- batable empirical claims about institutional functioning, not only normative principles" (Cohen, 1996).

Constructing Rhetorical and Action Frames

Regardless of whether we see the frames at work in policy controversies as strong narratives or as schemas of interpretation, these frames are not self-evident. If we wish to study them, we must construct them, which is to say that from some evidence we must infer interpretations about belief and meaning and implications for action to deal with coping and facing. In constructing a frame, however, we encounter inherent possi- bilities for ambiguity, because the same beliefs and meanings can be consistent with different courses of action and attitudes toward truth. This is the same phenomenon that Romer discusses when he speaks of "many theories that are consistent with the same small number of facts." (It is for this reason, too, as S.M. Miller observed, that behind most political agreements there lurks a misunderstanding: ambiguity may facilitate consensus).

From what sorts of evidence are frames to be constructed? Here, we make what we consider a crucial distinction between two different contexts of policy discourse. The first consists in the espoused theory put forward by frame sponsors or critics in the realm of policy debate; the second consists in the pattern of actions undertaken by policy practitioners, those who design and implement policies in the realm of action. We call frames of the first type "rhetorical frames;" frames of the second type are "action frames." The crucial difference, it should be noted, does not consist in whether the frame as constructed makes reference to action---both rhetorical and action frames do so but from what evidence the frame is constructed.

Rhetorical frames are constructed from the policy-relevant texts that play important roles in policy discourse, where the context is one of debate, persuasion, or justification. Given such a text--a speech, memorandum, or journalistic essay, that may be produced by a politician, advocate, critic, journalist, or policy intellectual--the frame analyst must ask what gives the text its appearance of coherence, persuasiveness, and obviousness. In

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our terms, how does the writer make the normative leap from is to ought? In answering such questions, we look for evidence in the actual language employed in the text.

Consider, for example, the testimony of Charles Murray to the Senate Finance Committee on the emergence of a white underclass (Murray~ 1994). The diagnosis is stark. A fifth of white children are being born out of wedlock, a fact about which there is little disagreement. Recent data show that almost half of all children in New York City are born out of wedlock (New York Times, 1995). But, why should we worry about such facts? Murray argues that these were the same facts that described the black community twenty years ago; but now more than three-quarters of all black children are born out of wedlock, and the "white underclass" is likely to follow the same pattern. What makes single parenting problematic is its association with welfare, crime, and social malaise. Hence, single parenthood is the most important social problem of the day.

Having established the diagnosis, what prescription does Murray offer to address the problem? His prescription is as challenging as his diagnosis, but he manages artfully to give it a strong cultural resonance. As a guide to action the story unfolds as follows. It is natural for boys to want sex and for girls to think that babies are cute. Society recognizes these natural impulses and creates norms to check the behavior by stigmatizing pregnancies outside of marriage. The welfare state interferes with this adap- tive response by the natural institutions of family and community. They do so by actually creating economic incentives to have babies outside marriage, since this is a precondition for eligibility for welfare programs. What are needed instead are policies to create incentives for marriage. This requires eliminating AFDC, promoting adoption, and developing orphan asylums, which are viewed as "24-hour day care" rather than total institutions, as Goffman once characterized them. We can now identify the issue terrain as welfare reform and the name of the frame as abolishing welfare. In Murray's strong frame-narrative, the policy causes the problem through its creation of perverse incentives. The solution is to rely on the natural institution of family and community to penalize rather than encourage single parenthood.

In contrast to rhetorical frames, action frames are constructed from the evidence provided by observation of patterns of action inherent in the practice of policy practitioners. Given patterns of policy-relevant action, one can ask: "What gives these patterns their coherence? How must the actors be making diagnostic/prescriptive sense of the situation in order to act in the ways we find them acting?" The evidence for the construction of an action frame is the data of action observed. The action in question consists in policy design inquiry, which includes both the design of policy objects (for example, the formulation of laws, regulation, or programs) and the behavior through which practitioners enact such policies.

There are significant differences in the contents of rhetorical and action frames which stem from the different kinds of evidence, the different contexts from which they are constructed. In the realm of policy debate, one


can manifest pure frames, which are, in effect "ideal types;" for example, Murray's frame to reject "welfare policy and rely on natural institutions" or the frames of "need, market, and social control," which we identified in our discussion of the case of homelessness in Massachusetts, in Frame Re- flection, or the frames of "technology optimism" and "technology skepti- cism," which we identified in our discussion of the case of Project Athena at MIT (Schtn and Rein, 1994). But action frames, which are derived from the concrete situations of policy practice, tend to be more muddied, fuzzier, and mixed. When compared with the ideal-type frames of policy debate, they are likely to appear as hybrids.

In our account of the development of programs for the homeless in Massachusetts, for example, we constructed action frames held by several institutional actors, such as the Department of Public Welfare (DPW) and the Executive Office of Community Development (EOCD). These institutional action frames are mixtures. For example, DPW's action frame includes elements of need, social control, and market; so, in a different manner, does EOCD's. Moreover, institutional action frames exist at some level of generality and abstraction: they do not dictate just how a repre- sentative of the institution should behave in any particular instance. Be- cause of the hybrid and relatively general character of institutional action frames, individual agency representatives enjoy (or suffer) a zone of discretionary freedom. They are more or less free to select particular combi- nations of elements of the institutional action frame on which to act, free to specify the general institutional action frame in different ways. This gap of discretionary freedom is what makes it possible for the four agency heads, in the last stage of our homelessness stor)~ to work out a conver- gent approach to the screening of families for entry into the hotels and motels, and to the specification of durations of stay for families in the shelters--and to do so without violating the norms of the agencies they represent.

The rhetorical frames held by participants in the forums of policy debate may have little to do with the frames that shape patterns of action in the policy arena and in the forums within which policy objects are designed and enacted. It is always an open question, in any particular case, how we should understand the relationship between espoused rhetorical frames and situated action frames.

Nevertheless, although they may differ in the elements to which they point and the actions they propose, all frame narratives are diagnostic and prescriptive. Because frames all have a common framework of narration, commensurability is possible. This is crucial because it means that it is possible in principle to translate across frames and there is always a potential for reframing. A crucial issue in this conceptualization is to identify the scope for reflection in the reframing process, which we discuss in the following section. This does not imply that the potential for frame translation and for reframing arise only because all frames share a narrative structure. An equally more important source of these potentials lies in the fact that the actors are engaged in a common situation of action.

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An Overview of Frame-Critical Policy Analysis and Frame-Reflective Policy Practice

Here we set out a brief account of what we mean by frame-reflective policy practice and frame-crifical policy analysis. Policy analysis is a discipline and, like all disciplines, a practice in its own right. It seeks, at least in its dominant manifestations, to take a distanced perspective on policy controversies broadly defined. In its economic-rational actor mode, it seeks to identify issues of policy choice, to construct a "search space" of options, to gather data relevant to the choice among options, to set up criteria for choice, and to recommend choices. In its political mode, policy analysis seeks to identify and analyze the political game of interests and powers that is at stake in any given policy issue or dispute and to explore the more elusive terrain of political feasibility.

In its frame-critical mode, policy analysis seeks to name the issue terrain, to identify the competing frames at work in a policy discourse, and to specify the forums in which the discourse occurs. The starting point of such analysis is a concrete controversy which centers both on the claim for resources and a symbolic contest about meaning. The frame-crifical policy analyst tries to understand the policy discourse which is conducted by appeal to validity claims and orders of justification.

Frame-Reflective Policy Practice

Policy practitioners are people engaged in the situated, context-specific work of policy design inquir3a They frame issues and problems, in both substantive and political ways; they design programs, formulate regulations, evaluate programmatic activity; and try to resolve and work through disputes that arise around issues that are always both programmatic and political. They are designers in the sense that their work contributes to the shaping of "policy objects." This task involves two dimensions: policy as conceived in principle and as expressed in formal legislation, regulations, speeches, memoranda; and as policies as realized, i.e., what people in institutional/political settings actually do when they carry out the activities that correspond to any given policy domain.

Policy objects only partly result from the work of policy designers. The policy object is always the result of a policy dialecticma "policy conversation," in the metaphorical sense of that term--within which there are always surprising, "spewed out" effects. Policy as realized in a world where other actors are trying to reshape the rules and design is always different than policy as intended and conceived. Different, and often, contending, policy designers engage in contest to reshape the policy object, whose substance and form are always, at least in part, unintended outcomes of the contest.

The policy object changes its meaning and use as it moves across the various boundaries that structure policy design inquiry. Consider some examples: the boundary between a given designing system and the larger


policy arena into which a designed policy object is "sent out;" the boundary between legislation and regulation; the boundary between an explic- itly formulated policy and the environment in which it is enacted and used; the historical boundary between one context of enactment and use and another.

Policy practice is a form of design inquiry embedded in such a policy dialectic. Action frames underlie the positions taken by agents in this process. These are the assumptional and value structures that underlie the policy design activities of the practitioners and account for their patterns of more or less coherent action. (The very process of doing, coping, and facing requires adapting to a changing policy environment, and the dy- namics of action and reaction are always likely to lead to frame extensions and blending which may weaken internal frame coherence.)

Action frames have institutional sponsors as well as individual agents or enactors. When an agent undertakes to work out a consensual approach to the screening of families' entry into the hotels and motels, in the final stage of the redesign of homelessness policy, she is acting "from" the Wel- fare Department's institutional action frame, but she is also acting from her own particular version of that frame. This is possible because, as we have pointed out earlier, the institutional action frame is hybrid and in- completely specified. There is a gap between institutional action frame and the concrete situation, within which agents who are supposed to represent their institutional perspective may be free to design their actions.

Frame conflicts arise in policy practice when different actors enter into policy disputes as carriers of different and conflicting action frames, in such a way as to block further policy design inquiry. "Public polic3~ to put it flatly, is a continuous process, the formation of which is inseparable from its execution." As Cohen and Fung point out: "Public policy is being formed as it is being executed, and is likewise being executed as it is being formed.'4 But the exercise of such discretionary power "undermines important rules of law and democratic protection." This is, of course, the position of the advocates (see Cohen and Fung, 1996).

Policy practice becomes frame reflective when the actors involved in policy disputes not only act from their action frames but turn their thought back onto the frames themselves and engage in reciprocal inquiry aimed at unblocking design inquiry that has been paralyzed. In these open zones of inquiry--which tend to occur at "policy windows'--assumptions, views of the world, and values that have heretofore remained in the background, giving shape to foreground inquiry but keeping, as it were, to the shad- ows, become foreground issues, open to discussion and inquiry in their own right.

Frame-reflective inquiry can be situated, meaning that it occurs "bot- tom-up" as the actors grapple reciprocally with such concrete issues as eligibility criteria for entry into the hotels and motels, or regulations gov- erning allowable durations of stay in the shelters, and thereby surface and bring into question, and open up to the possibility of new ways of seeing and acting on, elements of the action frames that underlie their

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positions. We know very little about the anatomy of situated frame reflection. We know that it occurs because of the outcomes of the actors' design inqui ryuthe fact, for example, that the new guidelines developed by the main actors in the last stage of the homelessness case incorporated elements of the three conflicting action frames at work in the policy dialectic: need, social control, market. We assume that competent practitioners often know how to do more than they can say. It would be important to capture, analyze, and learn from the rare events in which they practice situated frame reflection.

Frame-Critical Policy Analysis

In any given issue terrain, there are almost always a variety of frames competing for both meaning and resources. In brief, there is a frame contest over framing and claiming. The two contests are related since the contest over meaning gives legitimacy to the claim for economic and social resources. When the opportunity for a frame alignment or a frame blending is limited, the scope for reflection is overly constrained, and when the contest reaches deeply symbolic meanings within societ~ we have an issue terrain characterized by intractable public policy controversy.

How can such policy controversies be analyzed? How, in situated policy disputes, can it be faced and coped with? Such controversies are an essential aspect of political democracies which are based on the assumption that democracy not only tolerates but encourages reasonable pluralism. This theme is central to Rawls's recent book on political liberalism, in which he asks: "How is it possible for there to exist over time a just and stable society of free and equal citizens who still remain profoundly divided by reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines?" His work focuses on the meaning of "reasonable" in a pluralistic framework. He asserts: "Reasonable in a public dispute is not the same as the rational in a personal decision. Reasonable deliberation on public issues leads to a surprising position." He observes that "a democracy is marked by the fact of pluralism as such is not surprising, for there are always many reasonable views. But, that there are also many reasonable comprehensive doctrines affirmed by reasonable people may seem surprising, as we like to see reason as leading to the truth and to think of the truth as one" (Rawls, 1993). Frame-critical policy analysis is an attempt to address the Rawlsian question of reasonable pluralism in situated policy controversies.

The first task of such an analysis is, of course, to identify the competing frames and their sponsors in an issue terrain of policy discourse. Frames are not free floating. They have institutional sponsors, including officials, established and recognized interest groups, and challengers (Gamson, 1983). In a similar vein, discourse is not free floating in society, but occurs in specific forums. The forum to consider depends on how the issue terrain is identified. The main forums for discourse on the issue raised by Murra~ in our earlier example, would include the civic discourse of citizens, the media, political parties, legislation, and academic disciplines. In these fo-


rums, rules for acceptable argument and evidence differ; yet discourse in one forum tends to influence discourse in the others.

To summarize, then, frame critical analysis begins with naming the issue terrain, identifying the competing frames of a discourse, and specify- ing the forums in which discourse occurs. We call this the problem of "naming and framing." The next step in the analysis requires that a research question be formulated to answer questions specific to the issue terrain selected. One of the most important questions is how reframing occurs. In exploring this question, the analyst might want to know about how the career of a frame has changed over time, perhaps moving from that of a challenger to a dominant position in the discourse. More gener- all}9 how does a frame acquire standing or come over time to be repudi- ated? How does a discourse in one form influence that in another form? What role does the media play in inter-forum discourse? The task of moving to the second phase of a frame critical analysis depends on the nature of the controvers~ the power of its power, the shifts in context, the windows of opportunity for reframing, and so on.

Coping with Policy Controversies: Identifying Intellectual and Practical Issues in the Relationship between Frame-Critical

Policy Analysis and Frame-Reflective Policy Practice

As we have noted, frame-critical policy analysis can be positioned within the broader discussion of deliberative democrac~ whose future prospects depend on the practical feasibility of resolving the controversies that in- evitably arise and increasingly confront liberal democracies.

However, frame-critical policy analysis has so far mostly taken one of two forms: retrospective studies of controversy (as in the Bovens and 't Hart study of policy fiascoes, or the recent French literature on the sociology of disputes, which we discuss later on); or theoretical analyses of the ideal preconditions for the resolution of controversy (as in writings by Habermas, Rawls, Cohen, and others). Both of these approaches stop short of directly addressing the relationship between policy analysis and practice, though they contain some clues about how it might be addressed.

The Literature of Refraining and Reflection

We start with the new French perspective, which is concerned with both controversies and the historical transformation of social categories into the economics of conventions. This perspective has been identified as "the sociology of disputes." "The emphasis on disputes is motivated by the assumption that such controversies and the social transformation that they may entail, make particularly visible the resources and competencies available to human beings for mastering social situations. "4 The French school offers an interesting insight into the potential relationship between frame- critical policy analysis and frame-reflective policy practice.

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The focus on "mastering" or more weakly facing and coping has three dimensions that are relevant for us: individuals play a central role in reach- ing accord; their action in concert with others leads to creation of new social conventions; and research can examine and perhaps facilitate the process by understanding the role that justificatory arguments play in the evolution of conventions.

The research agenda of the French sociologists rejects the methodologi- cal opposition between explanations based on individual conduct and collective behavior. The main focus is to better understand the forms of achieving agreement and coordination:

In the center of interest, instead, we find the situation in its temporalit~ the individual's uncertainty about the identification of the situation and the inter- pretative effort that is required to determine together with others, as a situation as a shared and common one .... The production of agreement and coordination itself (becomes) the key issue. (Wagner, 1994:274)

The empirical focus of this new research is on the historical transformation of the institutions concerned with wages and unemployment. "They show how the relation between employers and workers is dis- puted and negotiated, how new actors and arguments are drawn into the dispute, until this relation is nationally framed by new conventions" (Wagner, 1994:277). Because of this construction the branch of the new French social science has come to be known as "the economics of conventions." They rely on an analysis of historical rather than contemporary controversies because these provide evidence for the evolution of new social conventions.

Conventions are practices, routines, agreements, and their associated informal or institutional forms which bind acts together through mutual expectations...coordination between economic agents take place within a context of pervasive uncertainty with respect to the actions and expectations of others. Conventions emerge as responses to such uncertainty. (Salais and Stauper, 1992:171)

Boltanski and Thevenot have conducted extensive empirical studies to get at the forms of justification that underlie the search for agreement. They distinguish six orders of justification which they believe are univer- sal. These include "the orders of the market, of inspiration, of the public sphere, the domestic order, the civic order, and the cit4 of industry" (in Wagner, 1994:272).

While the French school is essentially historical and empirical, political philosophers who address similar issues have relied on a different type of inquiry. The works of John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas, and Joshua Cohen are all examples of efforts to deal with the management of public controversies. All of these philosophers are struggling with the same set of issues. They are


all interested in how democratic institutions cope with reasonable pluralism through a process of deliberation. In particular, Rawls tries to distinguish "the reasonable in a pubic discourse" from "the rational action of individuals." The reasonable and the deliberative are terms broadly consistent with what we call frame reflection, though Rawls, in his treatment of these quali- fies of inquir)~ has tended to focus on their preconditions.

Policy and Practice Reconsidered

How should we think more broadly and prospectively about the relationship between frame-critical policy analysis and frame-reflective, reasonable and deliberative policy practice?

One possibility is to treat them as two different modes of human inquiry, operating in very different contexts, in different forums, and proceeding essentially in parallel. Frame-critical policy analysis would then be wholly distanced from practice, an academic discipline critical of rational-actor models that draw on retrospective and contemporary analyses of various forms of policy controversy and the discourse they create. The question, then, would be what frame-critical analysis is good for: "Knowl- edge for what?" This does not seem like an attractive option.

Frame-critical policy analysts might instead choose to enter into the policy arena as value-committed actors, seeking strategically to lend their support to one or another of the action frames involved in a frame contest. The policy analyst then puts insight at the service of one of the contending positions, using a grasp of the map of contending frames as a strategic asset. This is in the tradition of advocacy planning.

It seems likely that such analysis would favor the frame of challengers, since, as Gamson points out, such an analysis helps to reveal the taken- for-granted assumptions in a policy discourse characterized by a dominant frame unwil l ing to give standing to opposit ional frames. The "Communist threat" frame in the McCarthy period is an example.

Suppose, however, that frame-critical policy analysts want to be useful to policy practitioners in order to help unblock policy inquiry, without taking sides in the policy dispute. (This is a position Habermas has sought for years, mostly in vain, we expect, because of the difficulty of locating a practice context that might correspond to his ideal speech conditions.) How, then, should the analysts think about what they do?

We believe that the analysts" focus of attention should shift from preoccupation with the preconditions for frame-reflective policy inquiry (as in Habermas, Rawls, Cohen et al.) to the practice of such inquiry. This approach parallels the stance Albert Hirschman adopted in his studies of the practice of economic development within his framework of imbalanced growth. 6 Hirschman argued for abandoning the preoccupation with "preconditions for development" that obsessed late 1950s analysts. He noted that if the "preconditions" could be met, the countries in question would not be underdeveloped in the first place. He argued that conditions favorable to development are, and must be, created through an ongoing practice of

Rein and SchSn 99

development, proceeding through an uneven process that takes conflicts and tensions as stimuli for development projects that improve economic performance. Similarl3~ we argue, participants in policy controversies can create conditions favorable to the unblocking of inquiry through their ongoing practice of policy design, taking intellectual, institutional, political, and interpersonal tensions as stimuli for further inquiry that enhances situated frame-reflection.

In exploring the interplay between analysis and practice, it is important to recognize, as Hirschman did in the field of economic development, that because policy practice is often in advance of analysis, the analyst must be able to learn what the practitioners are doing and how they are doing it on the, perhaps, rare occasions when they do it well. This means that analysts must engage practitioners in reflecting on their largely tacit processes of situated frame reflection.

To play such a role, the analysts must enter into a collaborative action- research relationship with practitioners, functioning both as students of practice and as "coaches" to practitioners who seek to enhance their capability "in the production of agreement and coordination" following the French school. The two functions can be complementar3~ since the inti- mate connection afforded by the coaching role also lends itself to the empirical study of fine-grained policy practice.

For a more traditionally academic policy analyst, there is likely to be considerable difficulty in gaining close access to practice. In view of the risks and additional burdens involved in submitting herself to such observation, the practitioner is bound to ask, What's in it for me? She may be willing to be interviewed about her practice, finding it useful, perhaps, to talk it through in confidentiality with an intelligent outsider (a mode of interaction that Robert Weiss calls "Learning from Strangers"). But, unless the analyst has the role and standing of a co-inquirer, he is unlikely to gain access to close observation of the practitioner in action.

In the remainder of this article we discuss several issues that are central to frame-critical policy analysts who wish to collaborate with practitioners in studying and enhancing frame-reflective policy inquir~

(1) Critical for any frame-reflective task is how policy issues are named and framed. For example, Bovens and 't Hart identify their issue terrain as policy fiascoes and identify the main frames as optimist, realist, and pessi- mist. This is one of the most difficult tasks since the categories reveal the conceptual frame of the analyst as well as the phenomenon under stud~ The task of naming and framing, therefore, calls for a high degree of self- reflection. Moreover, the description of the frames need to be recognizable by and acceptable to the sponsors of the frames, lest the normative position of the analyst intrude and bias the account.

The scope for frame alignment and frame blending partly depends on how the competing frames are specified in the first instance. What is at issue is how different ways of describing knowledge, behavior, or skill may differ in their usefulness for action--what Chris Argyris calls their


"actionability" (Argyris, 1994). Making actionable descriptions is central to the art of linking analysis to practice through such activities as coaching, consulting, and counseling. This point also links to the distinction between ideal-type descriptions of policy frames and descriptions of the muddied hybrid embedded in institutional practice and how individual agents blend and extend these action frames.

The setting of boundaries of the issue terrain can lead to a different identification of the prevailing frames involved in a controversy. The analysts need to have the capacity to distance themselves from emotionally charged controvers36 to accept the principle of plausible pluralism, to suspend dis- belief in frames to which they may be normatively opposed, and to engage in a process of deliberation that requires a high degree of self-reflection.

(2) It is important to consider critically how frames are constructed from the evidence presented by the texts or actions of its sponsors. One way of doing this, in the case of texts, is for the reader to interpret the text inde- pendent of the analyst's interpretation of it, in order to see whether the naming and the framing correspond to the reader's view. The post-mod- em critique cautions about the limits of reading a text and whether the reader should be constrained by the content of the text or the intention of the writer. But, in the context of frame-critical analysis, this raises the ines- capable question of the adequacy of a given frame construction or naming of the terrain. For example, Bovens and "t Hart assert that the failure of the War on Poverty, the tragedy of Vietnam, and the Watergate crisis are all examples of policy fiascoes. 7 But one could reasonably ask, at least with respect to the War on Poverty, what the evidence is on which the assertion of a fiasco is presented. How does the frame one holds influence the interpretation of the evidence? Here the issue of evidence and interpretation is crucial.

(3) A frame controversy occurs within a forum, and each forum has different rules of discourse about what are legitimate arguments and what evidence is acceptable. Analysts and policy actors participate in different forums. We need to understand how they interact when they function in the same forum. Here the role of the media is likely to be crucial.

(4) Consider the question of reframing. We know that the process is both exogenous and endogenous. The exogenous events provide the windows for opportunity. The endogenous events in reframing require both coop- eration and reflection. It is the scope for reframing that is critical in making a bridge between the academic, frame-critical study of frames and the practical issues involved in the situated reframing that sometimes occurs in policy practice.

The task of an analyst who seeks to make such a bridge is to find a way of encouraging the participants to be self-reflective so that productive deliberation on the issues can develop. Thus, the analysis is directed not only

Rein and Schi~n 101

to abstract understanding of the controvers~ but to facilitate frame-reflective dialogue among frame sponsors in the discourse so as to increase the likelihood of a reframing that achieves pragmatic resolution. The challenge in this task is how concretely to "encourage," to offer, to help. Exhorting is not terribly useful. It is better to listen to what practitioners say about what they are doing--better yet to observe them in actionmand help them to describe (a) what they are doing; (b) what action strategies, models, and problem frames underlie their doing; and (c) how these understandings contribute to their "success" or to the stalemates and discourse traps in which they may find themselves. 8

(5) Central to our analysis is the process by which reframing comes about through frame extension and frame blending.

When the policy pendulum swings from one unworkable extreme to another, what may be needed in the new situation is a mixture of an old frame that has been rejected and a new frame that does not altogether fit a new situation in which the previously unthinkable has become realit~ In order to make such a reframing work, the policy makers must reflect on the old and new frames-- accepting, in this process, elements of the old frame delegitimized by their recent reforms. They must import elements of the old frame that stand in di- rect conflict with the new one, producing emerging frames through dialectical policy discourse. (Sch6n and Rein, 1994:40)

The issue of frame blending and frame extension is essential to the work of a number of cognitive scientists interested in individual thought processes. Their research on cognition has not been extended to collective action. Nev- ertheless, the insights that they produce in their work provide a basis for optimism about the scope of frame emergence for public policy (Fauconnier and Turner, 1995). They view "blending" as a multipurpose cognitive tool on a par with analog~ recursion, mental molding, conceptual categoriza- tion, and framing. Moreover, it operates interactively with all of the above. If frame blending is a normal process of cognition, it may prove as well to be the key process in "coping and facing" frame controversy.

(6) Help the practitioners to appreciate the "discourse traps" in which they can be caught, and how they may be overcome.

One way to extend our understanding of reframing is to better appreciate the problem of "discourse traps." Political philosophers have considered discourse traps, but have treated them as preconditions for reasonable and deliberative discourse. But this focus on preconditions has been analyzed at a high level of abstraction removed from situated discourse. We think it is useful to identify situated discourse traps and how they may be overcome. For example, Bovens and 't Hart identify the trap of "disrupted discourse," where disagreement is not responded to and dispute fails to surface (see note 6). This is an example of a broader family of traps, namely the exclusion of significant and reasonable frames and limiting discourse to a


single forum. When this trap occurs, the possibility of developing social conventions for coping with controversy is limited.

(7) Offer practitioners access to a repertoire of fine-grained empirical descriptions of situated frame reflection, helping them to locate precedents and prototypes from which to craft their own approaches to the pragmatic resolution of frame conflicts.

(8) Help practitioners to examine their transactional responsibility for the stalemates in which they find themselves---for example, help them to de- tect the ways in which they may reinforce interactions characterized by win/lose behavior and distrust, or by self-sealing attributions. Further, help the practitioners to see how they might help to create a behavioral world of policy practice which is more conducive to cooperative inquiry.

Noting our emphasis on the pragmatic resolution of policy controversies, which is implicit in proposals such as those described earlier, some of our critics have asserted that we manifest a conservative bias. They claim, for example, that when policy controversy leads to stalemate, it can have the effect of opening up a discourse that has been unilaterally controlled by a policy establishment. Hence, they argue, policy controversies may have the positive function of instigating social change of a kind that em- powers ill-represented social groups. These critics believe that our emphasis on the pragmatic resolution of policy controversies reflects a conservative bias toward sustaining the viability of imperfect liberal democracies, when what is actually needed is a more radical form of "Utopian thought. "9

We recognize, as we pointed out in Frame Reflection, that policy controversy ought not to be seen as wholly negative in its effects on the conduct of a polity, that its existence may sometimes signify the opening up of a restrictive policy discourse, and that the inclusion of groups previously kept from "sitting at the table" may have the salutary effect of upsetting an earlier policy equilibrium. Does this mean that unrestricted inclusion should be taken as a categorical imperative, whatever its con- sequences for policy inquiry? To pose this question is to raise what we call "the dilemma of inclusion," which we discuss later on in this essay. At this point, however, we point out that the creation of enhanced capability for pragmatically resolving policy controversies is all the more important from the perspective of those who wish to create a more inclusive and open society, in which controversies are all the more likely to arise. The viability of such a "radically inclusive" democracy will depend, more than ever, on the society's ability to cope effectively (and noncoercively) with controversy.

Conclusion

Frame critical policy analysis, which takes controversy as the object of analysis, can flourish only if it can resolve the question, "What is it good for?" There are three persistent claims for an approach to answer this ques-

Rein and Schiin 103

tion: va lue-neut ra l , va lue -commi t t ed , and value-cri t ical (Rein, 1976). W h a t w e have tr ied to s h o w in this article is that wi th in the value-cri t ical ap- p roach lie t w o tributaries----one focused on analysis and the o ther on practice. We have sugges t ed h o w these can be complementar )5 sketching the d e v e l o p m e n t of a n e w kind of frame-crit ical po l icy analysis w h i c h w o u l d opera te , in close col labora t ion w i th pract i t ioners , b o t h to s t u d y and to enhance f rame-ref lect ive pol icy practice.

But, there is no d o u b t that retrospective and historical frame-critical analysis wil l also persist , i n d e p e n d e n t of cur ren t practice. How, then, can it be p u t to use? Are there general l e s son -d rawing p ropos i t ions that can b e re- c la imed f rom the a s s u m p t i o n that h i s tory m u s t matter , ye t h i s to ry is no t des t iny? Some organiza t ions do t end t o w a r d social amnesia , seeking to re invent afresh the b roken whee l of historical failures. A n ac t ion-or iented a p p r o a c h to cur ren t pract ice can n o w readi ly reject such a perspect ive . But, can it a lso serve as a gu ide to current and fu ture action?

Notes

1. This article constitutes a response from Donald Sch6n and Martin Rein to the contri- butions contained in Knowledge and Policy, Special Issue, "Policy Controversies in the Negotiatory State," Vol. 8, No. 4, 1995.

2. For this discussion I am drawing on the important paper by Donald Davidson, "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme," 1985.

3. For a discussion of the importance of cultural resonance, see William A. Gamson and Kathryn E. Lasch, "The Political Culture of Social Welfare Policy," 1983.

4. For an extended discussion, see Joshua Cohen and Archon Fung, 1996:50-51. 5. Much ofthe French debate has not been translated. We draw heavily onPeter Wagner's

account of the new theoretical developments in French social thought (1994). 6. See, for example, Albert O. Hirschman, 1958. 7. See Knowledge and Policy, Special Issue, "Policy Controversies in the Negotiatory State,"

vol. 8, no. 4, 1995. 8. For a discussion of discourse traps, see David Laws and Martin Rein, "The Divided

Profession" (forthcoming). 9. See, for example, Paul 't Hart's and Marieke Kleiboer's "Policy Controversies in the

Negotiatory State," and Maarten A. Hajer's "Politics on the Move: The Democratic Control of the Design of Sustainable Technologies," in the special issue of Knowledge and Policy "Coping with Policy Controversies," vol. 8, no. 4, 1995.

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