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The last decade has seen the rise of the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) as a valuable theoretical framework for advancing knowledge of the policy process. In this article, we investigate the NPF’s “travel” capacities across geographies, political systems, policy fields, levels of analysis, methodological approaches, and other theories of the policy process. We assess these capabilities by reviewing extant research and mapping newly explored territories. While we find that the NPF embodies all necessary conditions to travel to different settings, the empirical applications remain largely confined to the U.S. and European contexts, environmental policy, the meso level of analysis, the use of content analysis of documents as a methodological approach, and only a few combinations with other theories of the policy process. Our findings indicate that the NPF can travel well. However, we call for further research to conceptualize the NPF’s macro level, to replicate NPF scholarship beyond liberal democratic institutional contexts, and to affirm the framework’s capacity to be generalizable in varied settings. In den letzten zehn Jahren hat sich das Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) zum wegweisenden theoretischen Rahmen bei der Erklärung der Rolle von Narrativen in Politikgestaltungsprozessen entwickelt. Dieser Artikel untersucht die Kapazitäten des NPF, in anderen Regionen und politischen Systemen, neuen Politikfeldern, Analyseebenen und methodologischen Ansätzen sowie in Kombination mit weiteren Theorien des Politikprozesses angewandt zu werden. Diese „Reisefähigkeit“ des NPF wird anhand eines systematischen Reviews der bestehenden NPF-Literatur bewertet. Dabei werden neue, kürzlich erkundete Territorien speziell hervorgehoben. Das systematische Review zeigt, dass das NPF zwar alle notwendigen Bedingungen erfüllt, um in verschiedene Umgebungen zu reisen. Trotzdem beschränken sich bisherige empirische Anwendungen des NPF weitgehend auf die amerikanischen und europäischen Kontexte, die Umweltpolitik, die Meso-Ebene der Analyse, die Inhaltsanalyse von Dokumenten und auf nur wenige Kombinationen mit anderen Theorien des Politikprozesses. Diese Ergebnisse weisen darauf hin, dass das NPF grundsätzlich gut reisen kann. Wir fordern jedoch weitere Forschung, um die Makro-Ebene des NPF zu konzeptualisieren, NPF-Forschung außerhalb von liberal-demokratischen Systemen zu replizieren und die Generalisierbarkeit des NPF in verschiedenen Kontexten zu bestätigen.

Narrative has been observed to be central to the policy process – constituting public policy instruments, persuading decision makers and the public, and shaping all stages of the policy process. This article distils useful policy advice, which can be employed by scholars and practitioners alike. We call attention to two potential communication pitfalls to which practitioners are likely to fall prey: (1) the knowledge fallacy, and (2) the empathy fallacy. We then focus our discussion on ‘intervention points’ where narrative can play an important role, drawing attention to recent narrative research, which provides the strongest basis for overcoming communication fallacies. Based on arguments presented here, policy actors can construct better narratives to accomplish their policy goals, while scholars can better understand how narratives are constructed and the intervention points where narratives might be observed and therefore studied.

Narratives are increasingly subject to empirical study in a wide variety of disciplines. However, in public policy, narratives are thought of almost exclusively as a poststructural concept outside the realm of empirical study. In this paper, after reviewing the major literature on narratives, we argue that policy narratives can be studied using systematic empirical approaches and introduce a “Narrative Policy Framework” (NPF) for elaboration and empirical testing. The NPF defines narrative structure and narrative content. We then discuss narrative at the micro level of analysis and examine how narratives impact individual attitudes and hence aggregate public opinion. Similarly, we examine strategies for the studying of group and elite behavior using the NPF. We conclude with seven hypotheses for researchers interested in elaborating the framework.

This article measures the phenomenon of discursive lock-in via narratives, as conceptualized by the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF). Discursive lock-in underlies other forms of carbon lock-in that hinder societies from phasing out fossil fuels. Thus, being able to assess the characteristics of discursive lock-in is fundamental for its destabilization. In applying the proposed measurement to German newspaper articles on fossil gas that appeared both before and after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the analysis shows that although attention towards fossil gas rose, the discursive lock-in got reinforced, with the proportion of narratives not questioning gas usage remaining stable and critical narratives bemoaning the building of new fossil fuel infrastructure. These findings highlight the resilience of fossil-friendly narratives even in the face of EU-level policy shifts such as the Green Deal and REPowerEU. The combination of discursive lock-in and the NPF proves to be fruitful and opens avenues for future research. In diesem Artikel wird das Phänomen des diskursiven Lock-Ins über Narrative gemessen, wie sie durch das Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) konzeptualisiert werden. Diskursiver Lock-In liegt anderen Formen des Carbon Lock-Ins zugrunde; Mechanismen, welche Gesellschaften daran hindern, aus fossilen Brennstoffen auszusteigen. Um eine Destabilisierung von Carbon Lock-In zu erreichen, ist es daher zentral, dass die grundlegenden Merkmale des diskursiven Lock-Ins erfasst werden können. Die vorgeschlagene Messung wird auf deutsche Zeitungsartikel über fossiles Gas angewendet, die sowohl vor als auch nach dem Ausbruch des Ukraine-Kriegs erschienen. Die Analyse zeigt, dass die Aufmerksamkeit für fossiles Gas zwar zunahm, der diskursive Lock-In aber insgesamt doch verstärkt wurde. Dies zeigt sich daran, dass der Anteil von Narrativen, welche die Gasnutzung nicht in Frage stellen, stabil blieb, während kritische Narrative den Bau neuer fossiler Infrastruktur beklagten. Diese Ergebnisse verdeutlichen die Beständigkeit fossil-freundlicher Narrative, selbst angesichts politischer Veränderungen auf EU-Ebene wie dem Green Deal und REPowerEU. Die Kombination von diskursivem Lock-In und dem NPF erweist sich als gewinnbringend und eröffnet Wege für zukünftige Forschung.

There is increasing interest in the role of narratives in policy-making, as evidenced by the consolidation of the Narrative Policy Framework, a theory of the policy process whose overall aim is to explain how policy narratives influence policy outcomes. However, with the focus on only policy narratives, there is a risk of underestimating the relationship between the policy dynamics in a specific subsystem and the pursuit of consent in the political arena. To attract more scholarly attention to this relationship, this paper distinguishes between two types of narratives—the political narrative and the policy narrative. It focuses on how political leaders address the trade-off between the content of their political and policy narratives, not only adding analytical and theoretical leverage to the Narrative Policy Framework but also providing a fine-grained comprehension of the multilayered dynamics of narratives in politics. Our main assumption is that political leaders continuously address relationships and the eventual trade-off between their political narratives (the stories through which they shape the preferences of public opinion by proposing their general political vision) and their policy narratives (the stories they tell to shape the policy process and its outputs). The way leaders decide between these trade-offs can make a significant difference in terms of political and policy outputs. We test this assumption with a comparison of the use of narratives by the same political leader in labour and education policies in Italy.

The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) has become instrumental in understanding how policy narratives impact public policy processes. This article presents a systematic analysis of the historical development of NPF research, drawing on a review of 189 NPF articles to investigate its evolution. The findings are presented across five temporal stages, examining the use of the NPF’s theoretical elements. The analysis indicates a consistent focus on the core theoretical components, demonstrating the framework’s robustness. Additionally, the article examines whether the NPF’s ambition to bridge positivist and interpretivist approaches has been achieved. The proposed future research agenda highlights areas for further exploration. First, researchers are encouraged to combine the NPF with interpretivist approaches in policy narrative research. Second, our findings show a need for more in-depth analyses of specific narrative components, such as narrative characters, to gain deeper insights into their effects on policy processes. Third, there is a clear need to investigate whether and how practitioners are using NPF research to inform their communication strategies. This systematic analysis highlights patterns and trends in the literature, identifies gaps and proposes future avenues for empirical applications and theory development. Thus, this article offers new insights into the NPF, contributing to existing knowledge in the field.

The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) has influenced a generation of policy scholars with its emphasis on causal drivers, testable hypotheses, and falsification. Until recently, the role of policy narratives has been largely neglected in ACF literature partially because much of that work has operated outside of traditional social science principles, such as falsification. Yet emerging literature under the rubric of Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) demonstrates how the role of policy narratives in policy processes is studied using the same rigorous social science standards initially set forth by Paul A. Sabatier. The NPF identifies theories specifying narrative elements and strategies that are likely useful to ACF researchers as classes of variables that have yet to be integrated. Examining this proposition, we provide seven hypotheses related to critical ACF concepts including advocacy coalitions and policy beliefs, policy learning, public opinion, and strategy. Our goal is to stay within the scientific, theoretical, and methodological tradition of the ACF and show how NPF's empirical, hypotheses, and causal driven work on policy narratives identifies theories applicable to ACF research while also offering an independent framework capable of explaining the policy process through the power of policy narratives. In doing so, we believe both ACF and NPF scholarship can contribute to the advancement of our understanding of the policy process.

In 2006, Adam J. Berinsky and Donald R. Kinder published findings in the Journal of Politics that demonstrated that framing news as a story influences how individuals cognitively organize concepts and information. The study presented here moves forward in this tradition. This research combines samples obtained in the springs of 2009 and 2010 while conducting online experiments. In these experiments, slightly over 2,000 respondents are asked to organize concepts presented in one of three culturally nuanced stories about climate change or where information is presented as a list. Hierarchical cluster analysis indicates that when respondents are exposed to culturally congruent stories, respondent organizational patterns are more likely to mirror the story. We discuss the implications of these findings.

This article proposes an integration of the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) with prospect theory to investigate how the status quo and policy change are recounted in public debates. By integrating insights from prospect theory into the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), we investigate narratives in the policy domain of farm animal welfare, which is characterized by a strong polarization of actor coalitions. We compare public debates in France and Germany between 2020 and 2021. Our analysis shows that the NPF’s analytical strength is enhanced by integrating the distinction between status quo and policy change in narrative elements. This distinction enables further empirical nuancing of actors’ narrative communication, and in combination with insights from prospect theory, it allows for new conjectures about actors’ use of narrative strategies such as the devil shift and the angel shift. In addition to the theoretical contribution, we shed light on debates surrounding farm animal welfare in Western Europe: Both animal welfare and agricultural coalitions are unsatisfied with the status quo, but they promote policy change of different kinds.

This article introduces a unique approach to analyzing the performance of tradable green certificates in Mexico using the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) and Capacity Factor (CF). The Clean Energy Certificates (CEC) aim to reduce CO 2e emissions within the National Electricity System (NES). The research evaluates the operating conditions of the photovoltaic and wind subsectors from 2019 to 2023 by examining the relationship between the CF, the backup of conventional plants to manage intermittency, and their impact on the CEC. The NPF uses multiple dimensions and levels to assess the policy consistency and decarbonization goals of the NES. Additionally, it compares official CO 2 emissions reduction projections with the indirect emissions from backup plants, based on real electricity generation data from both subsectors. The findings reveal the need for fossil fuel-based backup power plants to compensate for the shortfall in CF, which generates indirect emissions. Therefore, the reliance on fossil-based backup plants underscores the necessity for a new and more sustainable method of CEC allocation. This method would be crucial in influencing decarbonization targets, particularly as intermittent generation in the energy matrix continues to rise. In summary, the expected delivery of 198,041 GWh between 2019 and 2023 by the PV and wind subsectors fell short of expectations, with only 159,188 GWh generated and delivered. Furthermore, the metabolic rate for both subsectors stood at 0.8 to 201.3 kgCO 2 /MWh for PV and 83.7 to 129 kgCO 2 /MWh for wind, respectively, surpassing the threshold for clean energy between three and four years out of five analyzed.