Frame-Reflective Policy Analysis in Practice: Co-Evolution of a Policy Regime and an Intractable Controversy in Biotechnology

Hisschemoller and Hoppe hitch on to William N. Dunn's point by stating that, when policymakers stubbornly continue to address such a "wrong" policy problem, there is good chance that "intractable controversies" will arise. In their eagerness to minimize trouble, policymakers seek to contain policy problems by structuring them so that the range of possible solutions can be constricted to existing repertoires. For coping with unstructured problems, they advocate a "learning strategy" which is inspired by Rein and Schon's concept of "frame reflection". The chapter analyzes the co-evolution of the Dutch policy regime regulating the introduction of genetically modified organisms in the lab and in the fields on the one hand, and the raise of an intractable controversy about the same subject on the other. In the emerging regulatory regime, policymakers only addressed the problem of biotechnology in terms of risk, the handling of which they expected to be warranted straightforwardly and appropriately by a preventive statutory framework.