ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ideational aspect of policymaking and examines how the cognitive maps orienting actors working in the domain of cohesion policy are expressed and used to develop strategic policy plans. It provides the effect of framing in order to capture the implicit characterization of public problems and reflects upon the implications of those characterizations for the articulation of funding goals, targets, and measures. The chapter also explores how the European Union (EU) framing of Roma exclusion was mobilized inside Spanish and Slovak Social Fund programming. It analyzes how these two countries constructed the problem and their associated strategies. The chapter demonstrates the way in which these factors shaped the implementation process and its outputs. The concept of social exclusion has become a lynchpin of EU social policy and a foundational idea for the reform of many national welfare states in Europe.
