ABSTRACT
This chapter presents one such approach: strategic framing. Even governmental actors seeking preferred outcomes know they cannot force decisions through by dictate. The chapter maintains by building a conceptual frame for policy choice, characterized by a particular problem definition, a rationale for action, and a preferred policy solution. Strategic framing is an analytical concept that helps to unpack the actors, institutions, and ideas involved in shaping policy outcomes in complex policy processes. Strategic framing is the deployment of certain ideas about policy change – including the depiction of a policy problem, a rationale for action, and a set of "appropriate" solutions – in order to reshape the existing ideas, actors, and institutions inside a particular policy domain. The strategic framing approach starts with the concept of the "policy frame," which Goffman defined as a "schemata of interpretation" that allow individuals or groups "to locate, perceive, identify, and label events and occurrences, thus rendering meaning, organizing experiences, and guiding actions".
