ABSTRACT
Based on extensive field research and a set of 65 semi-structured research interviews, this chapter explores the “interpretive flexibility” or lack of “closure” of fracking in Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania. These countries, in line with Central Eastern Europe (CEE) more generally, face the choice of embracing shale gas as a potential revolutionizing domestic source of energy. This makes them an interesting case for studying how policy narratives and discourses coalesce around a novel technology, and the interpretative frame countries and the communities that constitute them assign to it. This chapter explores the competing interpretive frames about shale gas within each country. Findings point to differing and indeed competing frames across Central Eastern Europe, and different sets of institutions sharing in those frames. These findings are not only interesting because CEE countries share strong similarities regarding external import dependence. They also provide for important insights on how the meaning of fracking is perpetually negotiated by those social groups connected to it.
