Framing and Discourses of Stakeholder Participation in Swedish Nuclear Waste Policy

Problem framing and discourses of stakeholder participation in Swedish nuclear waste policy

Urban Strandberg, Centre for Public Sector Research (CEFOS), University of Gothenburg,

E-mail: urban.strandberg@cefos.gu.se

Drawing on the Swedish case, this presentation will suggest a model that analyzes policy processes around complex and conflict-prone phenomena like nuclear waste, by focusing problem frames and discourses of stakeholder participation. The chief argument is that, under the condition that dominant decision-makers and stakeholders explicitly or tacitly agree on a fixed problem frame, the nuclear waste policy domain can be bounded in substance and, hence, navigable in decision-making procedures.