As part of a larger dissertation on wind power policy and politics, this paper will seek to understand some of the reasons why wind power development has accelerated in the past couple of decades in Sweden, despite facing institutional conditions that are more or less the same and which are not necessarily favorable to wind power. In these ways, Sweden provides a particularly interesting case of wind power policy because of the way in which wind power is regulated--under the general environmental code and therefore in competition with other environmental policy concerns. While policies that have incentivized the development of wind power have certainly played a role in increased wind power development, I argue here that issue framing by policymakers is also an important factor in explaining the increase. This paper will conduct an analysis of the changes in the way wind power has been discussed--or framed as an issue--by national-level policy makers (specifically, in the Swedish parliament) in order to determine what changes have occurred in how the issue of wind power development has been framed, coincident with the increase in wind power development in Sweden over time.
