Doing scalar politics: interactive scale framing for managing accountability in complex policy processes

An article by one of my PhD students, Maartje van Lieshout, has just been published in Critical Policy Studies. The paper takes an interactional framing approach to study how scale frames are used to manage accountability in policy discussions about "megafarms".  

Doing scalar politics: interactive scale framing for managing accountability in complex policy processes

Maartje van Lieshout, Art Dewulf , Noelle Aarts and Catrien Termeer

This is the abstract:

Complex policy issues increasingly play out in multilevel and multi-scale contexts. This allows for scale framing: framing an issue at a particular scale and level. In this arti- cle, we study scale framing as an interactional phenomenon in various policy settings, with a focus on its role in managing accountability. Using an interpretive approach, based on discourse and conversation analysis, we analyze three different policy interac- tions.We show how actors do scalar politics in face to face interactions, by using scale frames to manage accountability. We tentatively revealed three scale framing patterns. We conclude that a discursive approach to accountability is an important addition to more procedural approaches in complex policy processes.


The article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19460171.2012.689736 or downloaded here.