Governance Frames: Construction and Contestation of Multistakeholder Governance Arrangements

A vast body of literature in public policy has explored the role of language and discourse in constructing and communicating policy problems, through frames (Dekker 2017), narratives (Morgan and Wise 2017), metaphors (Yanow 2008) and discourse coalitions (Hajer 2005). Considerably less attention has been devoted to the discursive processes by which actors construct, promote and politicize different modes of governance. This paper explores how governance is itself the object of competing frames and narratives in which actors attempt to link their preferred governance model to specific policy issues. In this article, we develop the concept of ‘governance frames’ to capture how actors devote attention not just to issue definition, but the models of governance that structure political decision-making. Through framing the political and institutional arrangements in which governing processes take place, actors shape the broader decision environments, lending some options more possible than others within the logic of particular governing frames. The article draws on empirical cases from the political economy of transnational corporations, and in particular, how corporations actively construct and frame models of ‘multistakeholder’ governance that legitimate their engagement in global health governance and climate change. Overall, the paper contributes to the existing debates in public policy theory through two-fold argument. First, we identify the processes through which actors create governance frames (including naming and categorising, stakeholderisation, moral registers and design narratives). Secondly, we identify different types of governance frames shaping global governance arrangements, including collaborative and consensus-based logics of politics that render conflicts between corporate and public interests invisible. __________________________ References Dekker, Rianne. 2017. ‘Frame Ambiguity in Policy Controversies: Critical Frame Analysis of Migrant Integration Policies in Antwerp and Rotterdam’. Critical Policy Studies 11 (2): 127–45. doi:10.1080/19460171.2016.1147365. Hajer, Maarten A. 2005. ‘Coalitions, Practices, and Meaning in Environmental Politics: From Acid Rain to BSE’. In Discourse Theory in European Politics: Identity, Policy and Governance, edited by David Howarth and Jacob Torfing, 297–315. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. doi:10.1057/9780230523364_13. Hulst, Merlijn van, and Dvora Yanow. 2014. ‘From Policy “Frames” to “Framing” Theorizing a More Dynamic, Political Approach’. The American Review of Public Administration, May, 0275074014533142. doi:10.1177/0275074014533142. Morgan, Mary S., and M. Norton Wise. 2017. ‘Narrative Science and Narrative Knowing. Introduction to Special Issue on Narrative Science’. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, SI: Narrative in Science, 62 (April): 1–5. doi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2017.03.005. Yanow. Dvora. 2008. ‘Cognition Meets Action: Metaphors as Models of and Models For’. In Political Language and Metaphor. Routledge.