Esta tese buscou explorar, por meio da análise das narrativas pró-direito ao aborto no Brasil, os níveis meso e macro do narrative policy framework (NPF), bem como testar as possíveis contribuições das técnicas de text mining para as análises de narrativas de políticas públicas. Foram analisados documentos pró-direito ao aborto elaborados por ativistas feministas entre 1976 e 1988 e documentos de organizações feministas, projetos de leis e documentos de políticas públicas sobre aborto referentes ao período de 1989 a 2016. Foi feita uma análise de conteúdo dos dois conjuntos de documentos usando o software OpenLogos. Os resultados da pesquisa revelam que as feministas fizeram uma escolha estratégica por uma narrativa de saúde pública de modo a expandir a coalizão pró-direito ao aborto por meio da inclusão de atores da área da saúde. A aliança com a saúde levou a conquistas para a coalizão, com a criação de serviços de aborto legal e a inclusão da anencefalia entre os casos em que o aborto é permitido. A narrativa de saúde pública foi, assim, institucionalizada, tornando-se tanto a principal narrativa da coalizão quanto a principal narrativa contida nos documentos de políticas públicas. Essa institucionalização é um objetivo da atuação das coalizões de militância, mas também impõe limites (constraints) à sua atuação futura, já que seu abandono pode colocar em risco a coalizão, ao mesmo tempo em que demandas futuras têm de ser elaboradas a partir da estrutura de políticas públicas já existente. A análise da institucionalização de narrativas é uma contribuição ao NPF, explorando seu nível macro, ainda menos desenvolvido. A tese revela ainda que as feministas, em resposta à percepção de derrota, buscaram contrair o escopo da disputa em torno do aborto, restringindo-a às áreas técnicas da saúde e ao Supremo Tribunal Federal, o que contraria as hipóteses do NPF. Por fim, a tese apresenta contribuições possíveis de técnicas de text mining para a análise de narrativas de políticas públicas. / framework (NPF) through an analysis of pro-abortion rights narratives in Brazil. It also sought to test possible applications of text mining techniques to policy narrative analyses. I analyzed pro-abortion rights documents from feminist activists from 1976 to 1988 and documents from feminist organizations, law proposals and policy documents regarding abortion from 1989 to 2016. I carried out a content analysis of these documents using the OpenLogos software. Results show that feminists strategically opted for a public health narrative so as to expand the pro-abortion rights advocacy coalition through the inclusion of actors from the health field. The alliance with health sectors led to victories for the coalition, with the creation of legal abortion services and the inclusion of anencephaly among the exceptions to the abortion ban. The public health narrative thus became institutionalized: it became both the main narrative used by the coalition and the main narrative contained in policy documents. Coalitions seek to have narratives institutionalized, but this also constrains future action: abandoning an institutionalized narrative may threaten the coalition, while any future demands must be formulated within the framework of exiting policies. This dissertation further reveals that feminists, in response to perceived losses, sought to contract the scope of the dispute surrounding abortion, restricting it to technical health areas and to the Supreme Court. This contradicts NPF hypotheses. Finally, the dissertation also presents possible applications of text mining techniques to policy narrative analyses.

Esta tese buscou explorar, por meio da análise das narrativas pró-direito ao aborto no Brasil, os níveis meso e macro do narrative policy framework (NPF), bem como testar as possíveis contribuições das técnicas de text mining para as análises de narrativas de políticas públicas. Foram analisados documentos pró-direito ao aborto elaborados por ativistas feministas entre 1976 e 1988 e documentos de organizações feministas, projetos de leis e documentos de políticas públicas sobre aborto referentes ao período de 1989 a 2016. Foi feita uma análise de conteúdo dos dois conjuntos de documentos usando o software OpenLogos. Os resultados da pesquisa revelam que as feministas fizeram uma escolha estratégica por uma narrativa de saúde pública de modo a expandir a coalizão pró-direito ao aborto por meio da inclusão de atores da área da saúde. A aliança com a saúde levou a conquistas para a coalizão, com a criação de serviços de aborto legal e a inclusão da anencefalia entre os casos em que o aborto é permitido. A narrativa de saúde pública foi, assim, institucionalizada, tornando-se tanto a principal narrativa da coalizão quanto a principal narrativa contida nos documentos de políticas públicas. Essa institucionalização é um objetivo da atuação das coalizões de militância, mas também impõe limites (constraints) à sua atuação futura, já que seu abandono pode colocar em risco a coalizão, ao mesmo tempo em que demandas futuras têm de ser elaboradas a partir da estrutura de políticas públicas já existente. A análise da institucionalização de narrativas é uma contribuição ao NPF, explorando seu nível macro, ainda menos desenvolvido. A tese revela ainda que as feministas, em resposta à percepção de derrota, buscaram contrair o escopo da disputa em torno do aborto, restringindo-a às áreas técnicas da saúde e ao Supremo Tribunal Federal, o que contraria as hipóteses do NPF. Por fim, a tese apresenta contribuições possíveis de técnicas de text mining para a análise de narrativas de políticas públicas. / framework (NPF) through an analysis of pro-abortion rights narratives in Brazil. It also sought to test possible applications of text mining techniques to policy narrative analyses. I analyzed pro-abortion rights documents from feminist activists from 1976 to 1988 and documents from feminist organizations, law proposals and policy documents regarding abortion from 1989 to 2016. I carried out a content analysis of these documents using the OpenLogos software. Results show that feminists strategically opted for a public health narrative so as to expand the pro-abortion rights advocacy coalition through the inclusion of actors from the health field. The alliance with health sectors led to victories for the coalition, with the creation of legal abortion services and the inclusion of anencephaly among the exceptions to the abortion ban. The public health narrative thus became institutionalized: it became both the main narrative used by the coalition and the main narrative contained in policy documents. Coalitions seek to have narratives institutionalized, but this also constrains future action: abandoning an institutionalized narrative may threaten the coalition, while any future demands must be formulated within the framework of exiting policies. This dissertation further reveals that feminists, in response to perceived losses, sought to contract the scope of the dispute surrounding abortion, restricting it to technical health areas and to the Supreme Court. This contradicts NPF hypotheses. Finally, the dissertation also presents possible applications of text mining techniques to policy narrative analyses.

The thesis contributes to the policy transfer literature through the examination of narratives presented by policy actors engaged in policy transfer. The actors’ policy narratives are analysed through the application of the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF). With the use of the NPF, the research investigates the portrayal of narrative elements, including, setting, character, plot, and moral, by the transfer actors, in depicting their perception of the transfer process and object, and of the other actors involved in the policy transfer. The investigation is aimed at having a better understanding of factors that facilitate the occurrence of policy transfer i.e. transfer mechanisms, such as, conditionality, obligation, and persuasion, and how they manifest and drive the transfer process. To examine how policy narratives may inform the manifestation of transfer mechanisms, the research studies two cases of policy transfer involving international governmental organisations (IGOs) as transfer agents. These are i) the transfer of renewable energy policy by the European Union to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and ii) the transfer of disaster risk reduction (DRR) policy by the United Nations International Strategy for DRR (UNISDR) to ECOWAS. The thesis argues that the mechanisms of conditionality and persuasion were involved in the transfer of renewable energy policy, while the mechanism of obligation can be observed in the transfer of DRR policy. It further argues that the portrayals of the narrative setting, character, plot and moral, in the policy narratives of the transfer agents and recipient, shaped the manifestation of these transfer mechanisms. The application of the NPF to the two case studies enabled the identification and association of different policy narrative elements that will likely characterise specific transfer mechanisms. In addition, the study highlights the opportunity of broadening policy transfer research beyond a limited geographical reach, through covering two instances of policy transfer to a region in sub-Sahara Africa. It also broadens the group of actors that are often studied in the literature by considering policy transfers initiated and led by IGOs.

Despite harm reduction’s social justice roots, the broader understanding of harm reduction is often influenced by morals and values which leaves harm reduction to be conceptualized within a morality policy domain. This study adopts the Qualitative-Narrative Policy Framework (Q-NPF) (Gray & Jones, 2016), to explore the policy beliefs and values that steer current harm reduction policy documents in British Columbia. Four questions guide this study: i) What are the underlying beliefs and values steering harm reduction policy in B.C.? ii) How are these beliefs and values narrated through policy?, iii) In what way do the underlying policy beliefs align with principles of social justice for harm reduction?, and iv) How have policy beliefs shifted since the 2016 public health emergency declaration? The social justice lens for harm reduction (Pauly, 2008) serves as this study’s analytical framework and is supplemented by the Systems Health Equity Lens (Pauly, Shahram, van Roode, Strosher & MacDonald, 2018); both of which emphasize the need for harm reduction to acknowledge and address social and structural conditions that contribute to substance use harms and their inequitable distribution. As this study reveals, there is an ongoing tension between equity-related and non-equity policy beliefs and values characterized within policy documents, thus fueling a policy climate with incongruent and contradictory beliefs. Further, equity-related beliefs are positioned in the confines of equitable access, thus they are not equity-oriented in entirety. Additionally, there have been minimal shifts in policy beliefs since the post-2016 public health emergency declaration yet shifts occur in terms of the specific constructs which form equity-related and non-equity beliefs. Finally, the study outlines potential implications of these beliefs and proposes recommendations to improve harm reduction policy in terms of becoming equity-oriented. This study also outlines methodological contributions to the Q-NPF for future policy narrative and analysis studies. / Graduate / 2022-08-15

By “taking a knee” during the performance of the U.S. national anthem, National Football League (NFL) players have been protesting “the oppression of people of colour and ongoing issues with police brutality” in America (Colin Kaepernick, the movement’s founder, quoted in Coombs et. al., 2017). Despite this clarity of intention, the meaning of these protests (whether they are necessary and patriotic or counterproductive and ‘un-American’, for example) has been hotly contested in the public sphere, indicating the presence of a deeply seated counter-hegemonic struggle that is both expressed and contributed to by the anthem protest discourse. This project explores this struggle through the lens of narrative assembly, or the individual and intertextual construction of meaning through the selection and arrangement of narrative objects. Special attention is paid to the treatment of social, symbolic, and normative boundaries by storytellers responding to the anthem protest and by the anthem protesters themselves, especially those related to political expression in professional sports, American national and racial identity, and racial exclusion and marginalization. The project utilizes a structural approach to narrative analysis called the Qualitative Narrative Policy Framework (QNPF) supplemented by insights from Arthur Frank’s (2010) method of Dialogical Narrative Analysis (DNA). These methods are applied in a sociological study of a segment of the NFL anthem protest discourse published in newspaper articles during the first 16 months following the start of the controversy. This sample captures narrative responses to three significant moments—Kaepernick’s initiation of the protest, U.S. president Donald Trump’s verbal attack on protesting players in speeches and over social media (which also resulted in mass-displays of unified resistance from NFL players), and Kaepernick’s failure to obtain an NFL contract the year following his protest. Findings indicate that by transgressing several normative boundaries related to work, sports, protest, and signalling patriotism, NFL anthem protest subverts a hegemonic tale of national unity and exposes the systemic discrimination and symbolic/social exclusion that continue to produce experiences of oppression for people of colour and others in the United States. By attending to their assembly of settings, characters, plotlines, memories, solutions, and moral lessons, authors that support the protests are shown forming an intertextual or collective narrative around a central demand for justice that challenges the American status quo and projects a preferred future of enhanced racial equality yet to be achieved by the nation. Alternately, authors who oppose the protests are observed assembling a collective narrative around a demand for respect that defends boundaries essential to the maintenance of the status quo and expresses a desire to return to a past America of uninterrupted white dominance. In addition to providing a detailed case study that focuses on processes of narrative assembly in relation to counter-hegemony and social, symbolic, and normative boundaries, the project serves as an example of how the emergent methodology of the QNPF can be applied to the study of dynamic instances of everyday cultural-political struggle that may fall outside the sphere of policy research in which it has typically been employed. / Graduate / 2021-01-06

No description available.

The Circular Economy (CE) has quickly become a very popular discourse and is considered to be the solution to the manifold socio-economic challenges of the Anthropocene. What this actually means, however, is still unclear and contested, as different actors and sectors pursue a different degree of ecological, economic, political and social transformation. At the same time, many government organisations have embraced the concept and have set ambitious targets for the CE, with the Dutch government setting a goal of becoming fully circular by 2050. In this context, this paper contributes to the scholarship of CE discourse by critically examining what Dutch policy actors understand by the concept of CE and what this implies for the future of the CE in the Netherlands. This research examines the circular discourse in the Netherlands by means of eleven semi-structured interviews with Dutch policy actors in which the following five narratives are identified: (I) the Equal Collaborations; (II) the Circulate Raw Materials; (III) the Addictive Lifestyle; (IV) the Cross-boundary Cooperation; and (V) the Just Transition. The circular discourse typology of Calisto Friant et al. is put central in this study to analyse the five narratives distinguished. By mapping out the five narratives on this typology grid, this research provides insights into which type of circularity discourse is most strongly advocated among Dutch policy actors. The results of this study show that the Reformist Circular Society discourse is most firmly upheld through the identified narratives, which discourse offers very optimistic perspectives for the circular future of the Netherlands by combining economic and environmental objectives. Yet, this particular discourse does not adequately address all the challenges that the CE faces. By examining the CE discourse in the Netherlands, this research aims to contribute to a comprehensive and inclusive discussion on the concept of CE and reveal what circular futures might exist.

No description available.

The public policy scholarship says that media interract with the policy process in multiple ways. First of all, they offer various policy preferences. At the same time, they attach meanings to different policy events. This matters when it comes to the audience and its perception of chosen public issues. The media might also become an active participant in the policy debate and transmit their policy beliefs and policy preferences within this debate. The Narrative Policy framework brings these findings together with focus on the important role of policy narratives in the policy process. This master's thesis focuses on the case of family policy measurement adaptation in the Czech republic. The focus lies particularly on the government bill that has increased the parental allowance in 2019. This change has provoked a significant interest of the public and of the media, which were making their statements. The aim of this paper is to explore the form and content of the policy narrative and to say whether the media accounts have actively participated in the policy debates to possibly influence the policy outcome.