Framing by the Flock: Collective Issue Definition and Advocacy Success

Abstract

The framing of issues is part of the tool kit used by lobbyists in modern policy making, yet the ways in which framing works to affect lobbying success across issues remain underexplored. Analyzing a new dataset of lobbying in the news on 50 policy issues in five European countries, we demonstrate that it is not individual but collective framing that matters: Emphasis frames that enjoy collective backing from lobbying camps of like-minded advocates affect an advocate’s success, rather than frames being voiced by individual advocates. Crucially, it matters for advocacy success whether the advocate’s camp frames its policy goals on an issue in unity with “one voice” and whether the actor’s camp wins the contest of framing the issue vis-à-vis the opposing camp. Our results emphasize the need to consider the collective mechanisms behind the power of framing and have implications for future research on framing as an advocacy tool.

The framing of an issue is one potential pathway of understanding the outcomes of policy negotiations. Is the issue of nuclear power, for instance, essentially a matter of environmental benefits in contrast to coal, or a security issue due to the threat of accidents or even terror attacks? One might argue that how such emphasis frames (Entman, 1993, p. 53; Goffman, 1974, p. 21) come to dominate the debate in a country is a crucial explanatory factor in understanding why some countries are phasing out nuclear power while others are not. Advocates¹ who try to convince policy makers of a preferred policy outcome on an issue would surely like to tap into this potential power of frames. In fact, framing can today be considered an important lobbying tool and the ability to frame an issue by defining the problem at stake may act “as a weapon of advocacy” (Weiss, 1989, p. 117). Not surprisingly, the phenomenon of framing by nonstate actors has therefore attracted a large literature of in-depth qualitative studies (e.g., Baumgartner, De Boef, & Boydstun, 2008; Daviter, 2011; Dudley & Richardson, 1999; Sell & Prakash, 2004; Voltolini, 2016; Weiss, 1989) and also recently received greater attention from quantitative lobbying scholars (Boräng & Naurin, 2015; Dür, 2016; Eising, Rasch, & Rozbicka, 2015; Klüver & Mahoney, 2015; Klüver, Mahoney, & Opper, 2015). Still, the potential effects of framing have so far mainly been traced in studies of single or few issues, which tease out the complex processes of issue definition. Quantitative studies have largely failed to pick up these processes to show if and how framing matters for policy outcomes across issues and countries. Such an analysis is important to probe if there are generalizable patterns in whether and how framing plays a role in helping certain interests win out in the struggle over policy outcomes. The two main large-n analyses of frames in policy debates, namely Baumgartner, Berry, Hojnacki, Kimball, and Leech (2009) and Mahoney (2008), stress that actors find it difficult to (re-)frame issues, because existing collective frames are hard to change. This article argues that the contrast between individual frames and collective framing, which emerges from the mix and contest of frames at a point in time (Baumgartner & Mahoney, 2008), is crucial for understanding and quantitatively tracing the effects of framing, but has, so far, hardly been bridged by theory and empirical testing.

This article connects the literatures on individual framing and collective issue definition by shedding light on framing by lobbying camps of advocates promoting the same policy outcome in the media. We add to the theory on framing that the camp level is crucial for understanding the competitive forces at play in trying to frame an issue and sway policy makers. Our expectation is that frames used by individual actors are unlikely to affect their preference attainment, but that the frames used by an actor’s positional camp are more likely to matter. The reason is that, while individual frames are unlikely to reach and affect policy makers, those frames that get voiced by a positional camp are likely to be the ones that policy makers will perceive to be connected with this policy position. Furthermore, we address the question of how camp frames work to affect lobbying success. We hypothesize that to impact the public debate and reach policy makers with a frame, it is crucial to what extent a camp of like-minded advocates speaks in unity with one voice, meaning how consistently the issue is framed by a camp, as well as how frequently the camp promotes its dominant frame on the issue. Finally, we hypothesize that it matters for an advocate’s likelihood to succeed whether the frame most strongly promoted by her camp also comes to dominate the debate at the issue level vis-a-vis the framing by the opposing camp.

To analyze these relationships, a new dataset on framing by advocates in mainstream news media on a sample of 50 policy issues in five European countries (Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom) was generated. While the mechanisms we address may have more general applicability to many types of frames (cf. De Bruycker, 2017), we focus on emphasis frames in terms of “what is at stake in an issue” (Daviter, 2011, p. 2) according to the advocates. Newspaper articles on the 50 issues were coded to capture whether actors refer to substantive priorities of policy making, such as Safety, Rights, Economy, or the Environment, when advocating their preferred policy position. Based on existing framing research, we argue that problem-definition in terms of the trade-offs between such political goods at stake is at heart of understanding policy conflicts and prioritization of interests across policies.

Our results suggest, first, that success through such emphasis framing is largely the result of a collective process at the camp level rather than of framing efforts by individual advocates. Whereas the use of individual emphasis framing has no significant association with preference attainment of the actor voicing the frame, framing activities by like-minded actors affect the success of the individual advocate. In the case of the emphasis frames assessed in this article, the effect is positive: Individual actors benefit when their camps promote emphasis framing of the issue in the media arena. Yet, the positive effect of camp framing depends on how much the actor’s camp frames the issue in unity, so advocates in camps that frame more consistently can benefit from higher preference attainment. In contrast, the mere frequency of how often the camp promotes its main frame on the issue is not beneficial. It seems, therefore, that frame consensus, rather than mere framing volume, is important when it comes to collective framing. In addition, we show how camp-level contest of frames relates to the issue level: Where the emphasis frame promoted most often by an actor’s camp also comes to dominate the issue debate of all advocates voicing competing positions, this increases an advocate’s predicted chance of success.

These results on the effects of collective framing are relevant beyond the study of lobbying: Knowledge about how frames relate to advocacy success helps shed light on how certain arguments win the political struggle about “who gets what, when, how” (Lasswell, 1950). Specifically, our analysis makes tangible how framing in the news media is essentially a team sport, where the success of individual advocates is dependent on aligning consistent framing strategies with other like-minded actors and successfully positioning these vis-à-vis the opposing camp. Insights into these dynamics are relevant for advocates wanting to improve their communication strategies, as well as for scholars and citizens wishing to understand how the alignment of political arguments on an issue is related to political decisions.

From Individual to Issue: Camp-Level Framing as the Missing Link

In making some understandings of an issue more salient than others, frames can play crucial roles in problem-definition and solution-finding (Entman, 1993, p. 52; Goffman, 1974). As has been shown in qualitative studies, frames voiced in a political debate can be consequential, because “problem definition exerts power in the policy process” (Weiss, 1989, p. 99), ultimately affecting who gets their way in terms of policy outcomes (Daviter, 2011). Framing can herein be seen both from a constructivist vantage point, in terms of how meanings arise through interactive processes, which determine the understanding of problems and hence shape the choice of policy solutions (Braun, 1999; Snow, 2004), and from a more rationalist view of framing as a strategic process that attempts to utilize cognitive or organizational biases to manipulate policy outcomes (Baumgartner & Jones, 1993; Riker, 1986; Schattschneider, 1960). Either way, the verdict of qualitative studies is that frames have the ability to affect how policy makers grasp and process complex policy choices and hence work in favor of certain interests over others. As Daviter (2011) shows in his study of European Union (EU) biotechnology policy, the emphasis framing of an issue will affect who policy makers consult and listen to. Similarly, Baumgartner and Jones (1993) have argued that policy framing affects how decision makers process and simplify the multiple dimensions of complex policy issues, thus biasing what types of information and interests are included. If, for instance, policy makers come to understand an issue, as an environmental rather than as an economic problem, this will affect who they consult and listen to and, thus, influence who gets their way in the resulting policy outcomes. Yet, one can ask the following: How do these dynamics of framing work when it comes to affecting the lobbying success of individual advocates?

The latest quantitative studies on framing in the lobbying literature only begin to assess this. Some of the new research is dedicated to understanding the choice of frames (Eising et al., 2015; Klüver et al., 2015), which is shown to vary systematically across actor type and institutional venues. Regarding effects of frames, Dür (2016) shows that the issue frames used by groups have the potential to shape public opinion, but it remains to be shown if and how frames also relate to policy outcomes and preference attainment. Boräng and Naurin (2015) show that civil society groups are more likely than business to share frames with EU Commission officials. While one may assume that sharing the same frame makes a common policy position more likely, it is paramount to also test the relationship between frames and advocacy success directly. Klüver and Mahoney (2015) focus on the success of frames in shaping the outcome of legislative debates, but their contribution lies in testing a new computerized method to measure framing success. Overall, the latest quantitative literature on framing in politics is still far from being able to explain how frames and advocacy success are related. And importantly, it solely focuses on individual frames, whereas qualitative studies emphasize the importance of collective issue definition for determining how policy makers conceive of, and decide on, policy issues (e.g., Baumgartner et al., 2008; Daviter, 2011; Dudley & Richardson, 1999; Weiss, 1989). Both more theory and more empirical testing are needed to spell out how individual frames voiced by advocates come together and play out to their advantage or disadvantage. Such an approach can make a contribution relevant even outside the discipline of political science. As Cacciatore, Scheufele, and Iyengar (2016) recently attested, “the field of communication produces dozens of framing studies each year,” yet would benefit from “an overall refocusing on the concept, one that examines framing in terms of its original theoretical foundations and proposed mechanisms” (p. 9).

Camp-Level Frames

The theory put forth in this article holds that framing is crucially a collective process, but with effective consequences for individual advocates, depending on how individual frames on an issue come together. Baumgartner and Mahoney (2008) lay the foundation for this theory by connecting the literature on framing by individual advocates with the literature on issue definition (e.g., Baumgartner & Jones, 1993; Riker, Calvert, Mueller, & Wilson, 1996; Ringe, 2005). They distinguish “two faces of framing,” namely the individual framing of an issue by an actor and collective framing, which emerges from the mix and contest of frames at a point in time. Their article calls for large empirical projects to assess the interactions between individual and collective framing. So far, however, much of the connective tissue in terms of theory linking these two levels remains thin and only implicit. As Baumgartner and Mahoney (2008) argue, the “key insight here is that in a social network, […] collective actions are principally determined by the communications networks among the whole, more than by the preferences of any single actor” (p. 443). We argue in this article that the missing link in the evolving theory on framing is the camp level of like-minded advocates promoting the same policy outcome, which connect individual strategies to outcomes.

Advocacy camps pit the opposing sides on an issue against each other and try to pull policy makers in their preferred policy direction. Previous studies of lobbying success have shown that the strength of the camp in terms of numbers of actors or aggregate resources affect the likelihood of success for single actors in the camp (Baumgartner et al., 2009; Klüver, 2013; Mahoney & Baumgartner, 2015). As Klüver (2013) argues, lobbying “is not an individual endeavor, but a complex collective process involving multiple interest groups that are simultaneously trying to shift the policy outcome towards their ideal point” (p. 64). The same, we argue, holds for framing processes: not just numbers of actors in a camp but the arguments they collectively put forth for their desired policy outcome are expected to affect how appealing their goal is to policy makers. Importantly, this is not a process that any one actor controls and it is not necessarily coordinated at all. The assumption is that there is interdependence, or a community of fate, between all advocates promoting the same policy outcome, because the appeal of their position to policy makers is affected by how all their voices come together to characterize the alternative outcomes on the issue. Therefore, we argue that frames voiced by individual advocates are only very indirectly linked to how a policy position is perceived in the public and by decision makers, and that their effect only plays out in how frames voiced by the camp promoting the same position come together. As a consequence, individual frames are unlikely to exert an effect on lobbying success (Baumgartner et al., 2009; Mahoney, 2008). In contrast, we expect the set of frames voiced by a positional camp of advocates to impact the public discussion and perception of policy options, hence potentially shaping how decision makers process information, who they consult, and, ultimately, how they decide on an issue (cf. Baumgartner & Jones, 1993; Daviter, 2011). For this reason, we expect that camp-level framing affects the likelihood of preference attainment for a single advocate in the camp.

While our reasoning could be applied to many different types of frames (see, for an overview, De Bruycker, 2017), we focus on the effects of emphasis frames that attach a specific positively connoted policy priority or “political good” to the policy position. This begins from an understanding of emphasis frames as verbal attempts by advocates to define “what is at stake in an issue” (Daviter, 2011, p. 2). Such an understanding goes beyond the mere policy area of the issue, because it specifies what, according to the actor, is important to foster or protect, thus placing value to certain aspects of human activity. Most issues can be treated from several such normative vantage points which is why emphasis framing is applicable across policy issues and areas and, thus, suited for comparison across a large number of diverse issues. The issue of whether amnesty should be granted to immigrants who have illegally entered the country can, for instance, be treated emphasizing a rights perspective, stressing the rights and grievances of those who have fled war or persecution. Alternatively, emphasis can be placed on the (positive or negative) effects that legalizing immigrants has on the economy in terms of unemployment or economic growth. Others may emphasize security concerns connected to flows of migrants or their illegal status, while even others might stress effects on national culture. Given such emphasis framing stresses different but politically similarly important ends to cultivate, we expect these frames to be positively related to preference attainment when they come to be publicly associated with a policy position, compared with when there is no emphasis framing of the priority at stake. Yet, whereas such an effect is unlikely to be achieved by individually voiced emphasis frames, ideas promoted by a camp have the potential to be associated with how potential policy change is perceived and thereby to be more likely to affect public perceptions and, ultimately, decision makers. This results in the following first hypothesis:

• Hypothesis 1 (H1): The emphasis frames used by the positional camp of an advocate are more likely to increase that advocate’s likelihood of preference attainment than the individual emphasis frames used by the advocate.

Frame Dominance and Competition Between Camps

In addition to arguing that camp framing matters for advocacy success, it is highly valuable to quantitatively assess hypotheses on how it does so. We assess three related potential ways linked to how dominant camp frames, meaning the frames voiced most prominently by an actor’s camp, are promoted and compete with those of the opposing camp. At heart of these mechanisms lies the argument that it is important that a frame, meaning in our case the political priority emphasized, is cognitively connected to a specific policy position in the public arena and perception of policy makers. This association should be affected by the frame that is most often promoted by a positional camp, which we call the dominant camp frame.

First, we argue that the unity with which the camp promotes its dominant frame should affect how likely it is to reach policy makers with the “message” of the dominant policy priority at stake. We argue that framing with one voice as a camp, meaning using consistent emphasis framing, should be conducive to sending a strong message. Indeed, Nelson and Yackee (2012) have shown that it matters for the success of advocates in active lobbying coalitions whether they send a signal of consensus on the coalition’s message. Similarly, frame consensus within a camp may increase effectiveness of reaching and convincing policy makers of a preferred outcome.

Second, one can argue that the frequency with which the dominant frame is used should increase the chances of successfully associating a political good with the preferred policy outcome. Both from a constructivist perceptive of shaping meaning through social interactions and from a more rationalist view of framing as a strategic process of biasing or convincing decision makers, the level of exposure to the dominant frame can be expected to matter for reaching relevant audiences including the general public and policy makers. Advocates in a camp should benefit more, the more often their most frequently used camp frame is spread. The stronger the presence of their dominant frame, the higher should be the likelihood to affect public and policy makers’ perceptions with it. Therefore, we expect a higher frequency of use of the dominant camp frame to increase the likelihood of success for advocates in that camp.

Third and crucially, we argue that for the dominant camp frame to be most likely to positively affect public and political perceptions, it matters whether the dominant frame promoted by the camp level also comes to dominate the issue in relation to the dominant frame of the competing camp. As Dudley and Richardson (1999) show for the case of EU steel policy, competing advocacy coalitions try to impose their frames on the policy discourse on the issue in general. They show how, over time, the balance of power in EU steel policy shifts as a free market frame becomes the dominant policy frame on the issue. In this way, issue definition (Baumgartner & Jones, 1993; Riker et al., 1996; Ringe, 2005; Weiss, 1989) can be seen as a contest between the frames of opposing advocacy camps. Boräng and Naurin (2015) use the concept of “frame congruence” to denote whether (different actor types of) lobbyists voice the same frames as EU Commission officials. We argue that when we are interested in the mechanism of how publics and policy makers pick up and are affected by frames voiced by lobbyists, a collective notion of frame congruence at the issue level is relevant. If an actor’s camp wins this battle of framing the issue in the media in contrast to the other camp, we expect policy makers to be more likely to be reached and affected by the emphasis frame, so preference attainment should be more likely for actors in that camp. Put differently, succeeding in seeing policy goals realized should be increased, if the safeguarding of the substantive priority, for instance, the environment, the economy, or safety, that is associated with a policy position has come to dominate how the general issue is discussed by advocates in the media. Whether this is a conscious process of being convinced by the help of the issue frame, or a subconscious process of associating certain policy priorities more strongly with the issue, is not possible to distinguish. Yet, irrespective of this, we argue that the congruence between dominant camp and issue frames suggests how successful the camp was in positioning its substantive priority as most prevalent on the issue. So, whenever the opposing camps voice different dominant frames, we predict a higher likelihood of success for actors in the camp whose frame of what is at stake dominates the debate at the issue level. In contrast, where the two camps voice the same dominant frame, we do not expect an effect as none of the two sides enjoy a comparative advantage from having won the battle of framing at the issue level.

Hypotheses 2, 3, and 4 summarize these expectations on frame consensus, frequency of use of the dominant frame, and camp-issue frame congruence, as three ways in which the emphasis framing by a camp affects issue perceptions and, ultimately, policy decisions and lobbying success.

• Hypothesis 2 (H2): The more unity there is in the use of emphasis frames by an advocate’s camp, the higher the likelihood of preference attainment for the advocate.

• Hypothesis 3 (H3): The more frequently the dominant emphasis frame is used by an advocate’s camp, the higher the likelihood of preference attainment for the advocate.

• Hypothesis 4 (H4): Congruence between the emphasis frame used dominantly by an advocate’s camp and the dominant emphasis frame at issue level increases the advocate’s likelihood of preference attainment.

To sum up, Figure 1 illustrates the hypothesized relationships. It shows that individual frames voiced by advocates when promoting a policy position are only distantly related to how policy change and status quo are publicly perceived, which sets the context for how policy makers weigh up the trade-offs between different political outcomes, and ultimately decide. So, we argue that individual frames only have an indirect effect that is strongly moderated through how frames voiced by the camp of an advocates come together and compete with the opposing camp. As Figure 1 shows, the Dominant Frame at camp level results from the individual frames voiced by actors in the lobbying camp, depending on which emphasis frame (A-D) is voiced most often. Its effect on public perceptions are hypothesized to work through (a) the unity of camp framing, (b) the frequency of use of the dominant camp frame, and (c) congruence between the dominant frames at the camp and issue level. Where the dominant frame promoted by an advocate’s camp is promoted more homogenously, more frequently and more competitively in relation to the other camp, all advocates in the camp should benefit from a higher likelihood that their collective emphasis frame is favorably taken into account by policy makers and have a higher likelihood of preference attainment.

Figure 1.

Illustration of camp framing relationships.

Research Design

Unfortunately, experimental designs that have been used to assess the effects of frames on citizens (most famously Tversky & Kahneman, 1981) cannot feasibly be applied to assess the effect of camp-level framing, because such collective frames develop from the mix of all existing narratives that compete for attention in the public domain. These cannot be randomly assigned and presented to policy makers in a controlled manner. Therefore, we focus on the correlation between framing and advocacy success across a large number of quasi-randomly selected issues on the public agenda. While frames will be voiced and exchanged through many channels, including in hearings, consultations, and face-to-face discussions, we herein focus on frames that are voiced by advocates in mainstream media, as a reflection of public debates to which policy makers are exposed. As De Bruycker (2017, p. 6) stresses, the news media is a good, but so far relatively neglected, venue to study collective advocacy frames. Importantly, we acknowledge that frames reported in mainstream newspapers are subject to a bias, because journalists and editors get to choose who and what they quote (Bennett, 1990). Yet, our reasoning is that this filtering is part of how collective framing works. Those positions and frames that make it into the mainstream media are likely to be the ones that crucially shape the characterization of an issue and of the competing positions on it. Policy makers are exposed to these frames in mainstream media and may be expected to take them as an indication of positions and arguments on a policy issue. While it would be ideal to assess and compare if the frames voiced in the mainstream media are consistent with how advocates frame issues in other interactions with policy makers, this goes beyond the scope of this article.

To capture and analyze frames at the individual, camp, and issue level, we opted for a coding of direct quotes by advocates in newspaper articles on a sample of 50 specific policy issues. Ten issues per country were selected as a stratified quasi-random sample in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. These countries include variation in interest group systems, namely corporatist and pluralist (Schmitter, 1977), and worlds of welfare, namely liberal, conservative, and social democratic (Esping-Andersen, 1990), which may affect the appeal of emphasis frames used.

Sampling of Issues

The sample of policy issues started from the universe of national policy issues on which public opinion surveys were conducted in the timeframe between 2005 and 2010 and which measured the degree of public support for adopting specific policy changes to the status quo. This sampling is preferable to sampling only issues that are on the legislative agenda, because it means that the resulting sample of issues can vary in terms of the level of legislative action and phase in the policy cycle. Surely it can be argued that issues for which no public opinion polls exist will differ systematically from issues on which such data exist. For instance, an issue probably needs a minimum level of salience at one point in time for pollsters to ask about it. Yet, given that a similar threshold of salience is required for mainstream media to write about an issue (and cite different actors, their positions, and their frames), it is appropriate for this study to select issues from the universe of issues that are on the public (pollster) agenda, and assess how collective frames voiced in the media affect preference attainment of active actors. The stratified quasi-random sample of issues from public opinion polls was selected in a way to vary the media salience of the issues measured by conducting a keyword search in a major national newspaper for each issue.² Furthermore, the selection of issues includes variation in policy type (regulatory, distributive, and redistributive) and the level of public support for policy change, as these issue dimensions may affect advocacy success. Stratifying the sample in this way ensures that findings generated are not just limited to certain types of issue structures such as salient, regulatory, or distributive issues. A list of all sampled issues can be found in Online Appendix A.

Dependent Variable: Success as Preference Attainment of the Individual Actor

Advocacy success of an actor is understood in terms of preference attainment, that is, a binary variable noting whether the (lack of) policy change on an issue was in line with the position voiced by that advocate (Rasmussen, Mäder, & Reher, 2018). To identify the sample of actors and whether they supported or opposed policy change on the 50 policy issues, media coverage on each issue was coded by human coders. This strategy cannot necessarily be assumed to identify all actors active on the issue in all venues, but it is sufficient to assess the relationship of frames in the media and advocacy success.

Two media sources per country (center-left, center-right³) were coded for a timeframe of up to 4 years after the public opinion item was asked. Where a policy change occurred earlier, this ended the observation period. The codebook used by the coders to identify actors and code positions, can be accessed online.⁴ The coding was conservative in that only statements containing a position on the exact policy item were coded, while neutral or unclear statements were excluded from the analysis.

These data at the statement level were then aggregated to the level of an advocate within a policy issue, for which n = 604. For each of these units of analysis, a measure of preference attainment was created that relates the advocate’s position to the policy outcome on an issue at the end of our observation period described above; 1 denotes preference attainment in cases where an advocate supported policy change that was implemented, or opposed a change that did not take place, whereas 0 refers to a scenario in which the final policy outcome runs counter to the actor’s voiced preference. The policy outcomes on all issues were gathered by desk research and cross-validated by interviews with policy makers (on 82% of the issues).

Independent Variables

Our key independent variables measure frames used by advocates. To make our hypotheses on the workings of camp framing testable, our focus lies solely on generic emphasis frames, which are applicable across policy issues and areas and, thus, suited for comparison across a large number of diverse issues. The five different substantive frames included in our research are as follows: Safety (including security concerns and health risks), Rights, Economy, Environment, and Culture. These were selected based on categories in existing research (Klüver et al., 2015) to capture distinct understandings of what should be the major concern regarding a policy. These five categories proved to be applicable across the diverse issues with such emphasis frame present on 44 out of 50 issues at issue level.⁵

Importantly, when coding the five frames in the newspaper articles, only direct quotations by actors were coded, to avoid that a frame was introduced by the journalist rather than the actor itself. The five frames were coded as mutually exclusive, in that for each quote by an actor, where position and attached frames were identified, at most one frame could be chosen, namely the one that is mentioned first by the speaker, unless there is clear priority verbally attached to a subsequent one. Frames were coded by four human coders in all articles that contained at least one position on an issue by an actor.

A detailed codebook⁶ including signaling words for each frame, as well as an interactive Google Docs file, where coders entered additional signaling words and other coding decisions facilitated intercoder reliability. For illustrative purposes, Online Appendix B provides examples of quotes from the U.K. sample, the respective coding, and the signaling words used. An intercoder reliability test was performed on a sample of 30 quotes from the U.K. material.⁷ Krippendorff’s α (four raters, 30 units) lies at α = .78 for the detailed coding in terms of a categorical framing variable at the quote level, taking 0 (no frame) or 1 of five values (Safety, Rights, Economy, Environment, and Culture). This value lends confidence in the data generating process, because it is very high in the spectrum of acceptable agreement and close to near perfect for Krippendorff’s (2004) alpha. As summarized in Table C.1 in Online Appendix C, 176 frames were coded in the analyzed newspaper articles. These 176 frames were used by 167 actors, so roughly 28% of the actors active on the issue in the media voiced an emphasis frame as captured in our coding scheme.

From this framing data at the quote level, we created a binary variable for each actor in the sample capturing whether any of the emphasis frames were voiced while promoting a policy position—in favor or against policy change—on the issue. This variable on the use of individual emphasis frame measures whether the advocate voiced any frame on the issue in the media (1) or not (0).⁸

Regarding the camp-level frames, we aggregated the frequency of use of individual emphasis frames (at the statement level) for each frame type by all actors with the same position (in favor or against policy change). From this we created, first, a binary variable on the use of camp emphasis frame indicating whether the actor’s camp promoted any of the five emphasis frames (1) or none (0).

Second, we computed the unity of framing by the camp in terms of a Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) of the use of the five emphasis frames. The HHI was originally used as a measure of market concentration but has, for instance, been used to measure bias in the types of interest groups represented (Rasmussen & Carroll, 2013, p. 453). In the case of framing, the HHI can be applied to measure the concentration of frames by a camp in the five categories of emphasis frames. To derive it, the share of emphasis frames by camp members in each category out of all frames by the camp is computed and the squares of these shares are summed. The most diverse frame use by a camp (with equal shares of frames in all five categories) would approach 0.2 (1/5), whereas the most homogeneous frames use in a camp would have a HHI of 1. In addition, where no emphasis framing was used by an actor’s camp, the HHI was set to 0, so in the full sample, the Unity of Camp Framing (HHI) ranges from 0 (no emphasis framing voice) to 1 (i.e., all actors in the camp use the same emphasis frame).⁹

Third, to assess the effects of dominant emphasis frames, meaning the substantial priority most often emphasized by the actor’s camp, we identified the emphasis frame in each camp that displayed the highest frequency of use by the camp. Looking at dominance relative to the other frames ensures that the central mechanism of collective framing is captured: To potentially affect how an issue is understood by policy makers and in the public, it should matter not just whether any frame is used, but whether a frame trumps other frames, and prevails as the frame associated with the position of the camp. For the frequency of use of the dominant frame by a camp, we used the log of the number of times the most frequently used frame was promoted by the camp. This supports an expectation that while higher frequency of use should stimulate preference attainment, we would expect decreasing returns as the number of frames increase. The Frequency of Dominant Camp Frame (log) ranges from 0 to 3.71.¹⁰

Finally, we include the variable Convergence Camp–Issue Frame indicating congruence between the dominant camp and issue-level frames. The latter is constructed by first identifying which of the emphasis frames was promoted on the issue most frequently by both camps and then relating this dominant issue frame to the most frequently used frame by the actor’s camp. Where two or more frames have the same frequency of use, this was captured separately, both for the camp and issue level, and treated as a sixth type of multiple competing dominant frames.¹¹ The variable Convergence Camp–Issue Frame then compares the camp-level dominant frame with this dominant issue frame: where a different emphasis frame type is dominant in the advocate’s camp than at the issue level, there is non-congruence (0), and where the two camps voice different dominant emphasis frames and the advocate’s camp has the same dominant frame as at the issue level, there is congruence (1). In the remaining cases, both camps have the same dominant frame on the issue and no camp has won the framing battle (2).

Table C.4 in the online appendix shows summary statistics of all independent variables, as well as controls.

Control Variables

Our models include a series of control variables. First, actor type may affect both frame use (Klüver et al., 2015) and lobbying success (e.g., Binderkrantz & Rasmussen, 2015; Dür, Bernhagen, & Marshall, 2015; Rasmussen et al., 2018). We distinguish four groups of lobbying advocates, namely (a) interest associations representing public interest groups, identity, and hobby organizations (noneconomic interests); (b) organizations representing economic interests, namely business and occupational associations and firms; (c) trade unions who can be seen as fostering both economic and noneconomic goals; and (d) institutional associations and experts.¹² It is important to note that media access may vary for different group types (Binderkrantz, 2012), and given our issue-centered sampling of actors, we only capture groups that have successfully entered the media arena. Yet, as Table C.3 in Online Appendix C summarizes, all four actor types are active in the coded media, with business actors being the largest of the four groups, although often expected to prefer insider strategies (Dür & Mateo, 2013). Moreover, for all four actor types, considerable shares of actors use emphasis framing when advocating their positions in the media, namely ranging between 20.3% (Experts and Institutional Associations) and 34.6% (Trade Unions). And interestingly, all coded emphasis frames are used by economic and noneconomic actor types, so frame use does not seem to be strictly endogenous to the underlying interests represented (cf. De Bruycker, 2017, p. 4).

Second, we control for the level of activity of the actor in the media debate by including the number of positional statements an actor made on an issue in the observation period. Because of a skewed distribution with a few outliers experiencing high degrees of activity, we used the log of this total count of positional statements. This measure controls for the alternative explanation that it is just intensity of media lobbying rather than content of frames that matters.¹³ Third, to avoid a status quo bias affecting the analysis, we introduce a binary variable to capture whether or not the actor favors policy change or the status quo (Baumgartner et al., 2009). Fourth, we control for the share of actors on the issue in the advocate’s positional camp, which might be a source of bargaining leverage for an advocate (Baumgartner et al., 2009; Klüver, 2013; Mahoney & Baumgartner, 2015). Media salience of the issue is, fifth, included as a control, as it affects lobbying strategies (Junk, 2016) and expectably the numbers and types of frames voiced, as well as the likelihood of success for the single advocate (cf. Mahoney, 2007). Media salience equals the average number of articles on the issue per day over the duration of our observation period. Finally, fixed effects for countries control for unobserved heterogeneity between the five countries in our sample.

Analysis

We examine the impact of framing on preference attainment in a series of multilevel, logistic regressions with random intercepts for policy issues because preference attainment is likely to be affected by the issue on which an actor is active.¹⁴ Models 1 and 2 assess the effect of the use of emphasis frames by individual advocates and by their positional camp in the media in the full sample of 604 advocates active on the 50 issues. Both individual and camp use of emphasis framing are compared with the baseline of using none of the coded emphasis frames. Models 3 to 6 explore the ways in which camp frames work to affect lobbying success, by assessing the subset of all observations where the actor’s camp promoted emphasis frames in the media (n = 510 advocates active on 44 issues). They test variation in the unity, relative frequency, and issue congruence of the promoted camp frames while alleviating potential multicollinearity problems between these camp-level framing variables in the full sample.¹⁵ Model 7 goes back to the full sample to test whether the relationships traced in the subsample also hold in the full sample when controlling for whether the camp uses any emphasis frames.

As expected, we find no evidence in Table 1 that emphasis framing of policy priorities at the individual level affects the likelihood of preference attainment. Model 1 shows that whether or not an individual advocate frames her position in terms of one of the five emphasis frames in the media has no significant effect on her lobbying success. This effect remains insignificant when we add the effect of camp emphasis framing in Models 2 to 7. As expected in H1, these models show that it matters for the success of the individual advocate, whether her positional camp promotes an emphasis frame in the media. Calculated based on Model 2, an advocate whose camp does not promote the coded emphasis frames in the media has a predicted probability of lobbying success of 43% whereas predicted success increases to 57% for an advocate whose camp promotes emphasis frames in the media.¹⁶

Table 1.

Logistic Regression of Preference Attainment and Use of Emphasis Frames (βs With SEs).

	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)
Use of individual emphasis frame (bin)	0.02	−0.10	−0.18	−0.09	−0.14	−0.06	−0.13
	(0.26)	(0.27)	(0.32)	(0.31)	(0.32)	(0.34)	(0.27)
Use of camp emphasis frame (bin)		0.95*					−1.82*
		(0.39)					(0.92)
Unity of camp frame (HHI)			7.64***			8.67***	2.50*
			(1.47)			(2.46)	(1.18)
Frequency of dominant camp frame (log)				0.21		−2.05***	−0.13
				(0.36)		(0.62)	(0.31)
Convergence Camp–Issue Framea
Camp’s frame dominates issue					2.75***	1.93†	1.53*
					(0.63)	(1.08)	(0.67)
Same frame across camps					1.88	2.21	0.58
					(1.35)	(1.76)	(0.67)
Controls
Actor type (B: Hobby, Identity, and Public)
Business, occupational, and firms	−1.07**	−1.05**	−1.39**	−1.18*	−1.42**	−1.57**	−1.27**
	(0.37)	(0.37)	(0.53)	(0.50)	(0.51)	(0.56)	(0.39)
Trade unions	−2.13***	−2.02***	−1.92**	−1.92**	−2.04**	−1.98**	−2.25***
	(0.49)	(0.49)	(0.68)	(0.65)	(0.67)	(0.72)	(0.53)
Institutional associations and experts	−0.49	−0.47	−0.61	−0.55	−0.52	−0.72	−0.58
	(0.37)	(0.37)	(0.57)	(0.54)	(0.55)	(0.61)	(0.39)
Actor activity (log)	0.11	0.11	−0.04	0.03	−0.03	0.01	0.08
	(0.19)	(0.19)	(0.23)	(0.23)	(0.22)	(0.24)	(0.19)
Actor pro policy change	−2.27***	−2.37***	−3.48***	−2.03***	−3.27***	−3.10***	−3.35***
	(0.25)	(0.26)	(0.48)	(0.40)	(0.48)	(0.54)	(0.39)
Relative camp size	3.58***	3.16***	6.06***	5.90***	7.21***	10.73***	3.59***
	(0.66)	(0.67)	(1.17)	(1.27)	(1.24)	(1.90)	(0.86)
Media salience	1.84†	1.63	7.09†	4.28	6.52	15.54*	2.13†
	(1.06)	(1.03)	(4.24)	(3.69)	(5.16)	(7.06)	(1.26)
Country (B: Germany)
The United Kingdom	−0.19	−0.10	−2.36	−1.54	−1.64	−1.95	−0.36
	(0.68)	(0.67)	(1.56)	(1.45)	(1.65)	(1.93)	(0.83)
Denmark	0.23	0.30	1.12	0.48	0.72	1.60	0.35
	(0.67)	(0.66)	(1.50)	(1.38)	(1.60)	(1.84)	(0.83)
Sweden	1.52*	1.46*	1.39	1.89	2.61	2.37	1.57†
	(0.75)	(0.74)	(1.64)	(1.52)	(1.80)	(2.07)	(0.93)
Netherlands	0.24	0.41	1.05	0.88	1.18	1.48	0.34
	(0.70)	(0.69)	(1.62)	(1.50)	(1.77)	(2.02)	(0.87)
Constant	−0.50	−0.97	−7.77***	−2.12†	−4.13*	−12.01***	−0.64
	(0.67)	(0.70)	(1.77)	(1.28)	(1.62)	(2.66)	(0.87)
Policy issue intercept variance	1.49**	1.41**	9.99*	8.35*	12.21*	18.97*	2.35*
	(0.57)	(0.54)	(4.11)	(3.60)	(5.27)	(8.72)	(0.96)
Number of cases	604	604	510	510	510	510	604
Number of issues	50	50	44	44	44	44	50
AIC	638	635	435	468	448	429	618

HHI = Herfindahl–Hirschman Index; AIC = Akaike information criterion.

^a.Baseline: Nonconvergence of the dominant camp frame with the issue frame where the opposing camps promote different dominant frames.

^†p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Models 2 to 6 assess for the subset of all observations where there was a camp emphasis frame, which characteristics make it more effective, thus testing H2 to H4. Given that the frequency of use of the dominant frame, frame homogeneity, and camp-issue congruence are not unrelated, the relationships are first tested individually, and then jointly, to show to what extent coefficient estimates stay stable. In these regressions, we find strong support for H2 that the unity of camp framing is positively associated with lobbying success of the advocate, as the effect holds both on its own (Model 3) and in combination with these other independent variables (Model 6) in the reduced sample. Calculated based on Model 6, as the Unity of Camp Emphasis Framing moves from its observed minimum in the subsample (Unity = 0.375) to its observed maximum (Unity = 1), predicted success of the advocate in the camp moves from 26% to 60%. A consistent framing message by the camp can thus have a substantial and highly significant (p < .001 in Model 6) effect on preference attainment for individual advocates.

However, in contrast to the expectation in H3, the frequency of use of the camp’s dominant frame does not have a significant positive effect. Model 4 suggests that there is no significant effect of the frequency of use of the camp’s dominant frame, whereas Model 6 even suggests that it has a significant negative effect (p < .001). Model 6 might thus indicate that higher framing volume can even be a sign of trouble when holding frame unity and issue dominance vis-á-vis the other camp constant. Surely, the results do not give any evidence that higher dominant frame frequency by the actor’s camp is beneficial for lobbying success in itself, so H3 is not supported.

In contrast, both Models 5 and 6 provide support for H4: It matters for lobbying success whether the camp’s emphasis frame comes to dominate the issue vis-á-vis the opposing camp. Where there is camp-issue convergence, compared with nonconvergence, actors in the camp are significantly more likely to attain their policy preferences. In Model 5, this effect is very highly significant (p < .001), whereas significance drops somewhat with the addition of the other framing variables (p = .073 in Model 6). Estimated based on Model 6, the predicted probability of preference attainment for an actor increases from 39% to 51% where the camp-level frame comes to dominate the issue vis-à-vis the opposing frame, compared with a scenario where a different frame dominates the issue. Where both camps promote the same dominant frame, the predicted probability of success is not significantly different from the baseline of nonconvergence between camp and issue frame.

After having examined our hypotheses in the subset of all observations where the actor’s camp promoted emphasis frames in the media, Model 7 tests the robustness of the findings in the full sample. Given high correlations between some predictors in this model, its coefficients need to be interpreted with greater care and are only meaningful when assessed jointly with Models 3 to 6 on the subsample. Importantly, this testing on the full sample supports H2 and H4, as well: Framing in unity and winning the framing of the issue in competition with the opposing camp makes lobbying success significantly more likely (both at p < .05). The frequency of use of the dominant frame has no significant effect, so H3 is again not supported. Finally, the effect of the mere presence of camp framing in Model 7 has no positive effect anymore as in Model 2, but now has a negative effect (p < .05). Yet, given the discussed relatively high correlations between this variable and the camp framing characteristics in the full sample, this shift could be due to multicollinearity. What the presented analyses in Models 3 to 7 clearly add to Model 2 is that the precise characteristics of camp framing—in addition to its mere occurrence—are crucial for understanding lobbying success of individual actors.

Comparing the Akaike information criterion (AIC) on model fit across Models 1, 2, and 7 (with the same n = 604) in fact indicates that both the addition of the use of emphasis framing by the actor’s camp as a binary variable and the addition of camp framing characteristics of unity, relative frequency, and camp-issue congruence increase model fit (decreasing the AIC). In sum, these models suggest that there are important collective dynamics at the level of lobbying camps at work when it comes to framing issues in the media.

Turning to the control variables in the discussed models, we see a significant difference in predicted preference attainment between some of the actor types: Business, Occupational Associations, and Firms, as well as Trade Unions are significantly less likely to attain their preference than Hobby, Identity, and Public Interest Groups (p < .05 or below). This is in contrast to frequent discussions of a business bias (Schlozman, 1984), but in line with recent evidence by Dür et al. (2015) on EU lobbying who find that business actors are often at a disadvantage compared with citizen interests. As expected, actors lobbying for change are less likely to be successful than when they aim at preserving the status quo in all the models (p < .001). So while status quo challengers might have more access to the media (De Bruycker & Beyers, 2015), actually changing the status quo remains hard for active advocates. Also as expected, the predicted probability of success significantly increases (at p < .001) as the relative size of an actor’s camp increases. This is in line with earlier findings by Klüver (2013) and Mahoney and Baumgartner (2015). What the results of our analysis add to this is that, holding the relative size of the camp constant, the framing by an actor’s camp has an additional effect on the individual likelihood of preference attainment. Media salience only influences preference attainment in four of the seven models (at p < .1 or below) and has a positive rather than the negative effect sometimes expected in the literature (Mahoney, 2007). Finally, preference attainment varies little by country with the exception of Sweden displaying higher levels of preference attainment in three models (p < .1 or below).

Robustness and Additional Explanation

The above findings add considerably to our understanding of how framing efforts of individual advocates play out via the camp level and through the struggle between camps to dominate issue definition. They are also robust to using different model specifications and operationalizations.

First, our findings on the lack of an effect of individual frames are robust to a number of different operationalizations, namely in terms of the absolute or relative frequency of individual framing, as well as to including the specific type of emphasis frame (such as Environment, Economy, Safety) promoted by the individual advocate. According to Online Appendix E, none of these different operationalizations (Models E1-E3) reveal a significant effect of individual framing. Furthermore, while we found a significant effect when the dominant camp frame is consistent with the dominant issue frame, there is no similar effect for individually voiced frames. Individual advocates whose frame also dominates the issue do not experience higher preference attainment (Model E4). Neither does it matter whether the individual dominant frame is congruent with the advocate’s camp (Model E5). So, while our results strongly suggest that frame coordination between advocates is important for lobbying success, it does not seem to be enough for an actor to simply promote the most popular emphasis frame voiced by her lobbying camp. As we showed, it rather matters how the emphasis frames by all actors in the camp come together, so the promotion of frames becomes a complex strategic game where the choices of all actors in the camp should be interdependent to maximize the likelihood of preference attainment.

Second, we explored whether the interdependence between advocates in a camp—in terms of them being a community of fate that either loses or wins together—which is also at heart of our theoretical argument, biases the statistical results. While the multilevel models presented account for the nesting of advocates in issues, it does not consider nesting in camps. Due to the lack of variation in the dependent variable of binary advocacy success, it is not possible to add a third-camp level or to use clustered standard errors at the camp level. Yet, to attend to this valid concern of interdependence between advocates in the same (and opposing) camps, Table F.1 in the online appendix accounts for spatial autocorrelation, that is, interdependence of advocates in and between camps by way of spatial filtering (Tiefelsdorf & Griffith, 2007).¹⁷ To do so, principal components estimated based on a matrix of camp membership of all actors on each issue are included as controls to absorb the variation that stems from the interdependence of outcomes for actors in and across camps. Importantly, our main findings are robust to this: Even when including the principal components in the analysis, framing by the camp of an actor (as a binary variable) has a significant positive effect on that actor’s preference attainment (p < .05 in Model F2). Moreover, in these regressions, we also find a highly significant positive effect of emphasis frame unity in the camp (p < .01 or below in Models F3, F6, and F7¹⁸) and of the convergence of issue and camp frame on preference attainment (p < .001 in Models F5, F6, and F7).

Third, alternative operationalizations of frame unity and frequency of dominant frames by the camp keep our results intact, as Table D.1 in Online Appendix D shows. Where unity is measured as the share of all emphasis frames voiced by the actor’s camp that are the dominant frame (rather than the HHI), unity still has an effect of similar size and significance (p < .001) in the full and limited sample. Similarly, where frequency is measured relatively in terms of how often the actor’s camp promoted the dominant frame relative to all frames by both camps on the issue, there is still no, or a negative, effect of the relative frequency of dominant frame use by the camp.¹⁹ The effect of camp-issue congruence is robust to using these alternative operationalization, as well (p < .01).

Finally, we tentatively test a further explanation in addition to framing unity by the camp and competitive processes of camp-issue congruence, namely the effect of the type of dominant emphasis frame by the actor’s camp. An actor’s lobbying success may depend on which particular emphasis frame (such as a dominant Safety, Rights, Economy, Environment or Culture frame) is prominently connected to the desired policy position through the camp’s framing efforts. Table G.1 in the online appendix indicates that there are, in fact, differences in how appealing the different dominant camp frames are, with dominant Economy and Environment emphasis frames at camp level being associated with significantly higher preference attainment (at p < .001) than the baseline of none of these emphasis camp frames promoted by the camp. In contrast, a dominant Rights frame at camp level as well as being in a camp that equally frequently promotes multiple competing frames rather than one dominant emphasis frame are associated with significantly lower preference attainment than this baseline (at p < .05 and p < .01, respectively). However, to what extent these differences between the more and less successful emphasis frames are generalizable across issues outside the sample of 50 issues assessed in this article is not certain. There might, for instance, be interactions with sets of policy areas that reward certain of the emphasis frames more than others. On the contrary, one might argue that the perception of what are the most fitting policy areas an issue falls under is at least partly affected by collective framing processes (cf. Daviter, 2011, p. 19). For these reasons, it is harder to draw generalizable conclusions on the appeal of specific types of emphasis frames, such as Economy versus Safety, across issues and policy areas.

In contrast, the framing characteristics analyzed in this article, namely the promotion of any emphasis frame by the camp in the media, framing unity, dominant frame frequency, and camp-issue congruence, should have broader applicability, because there is no reason to think that emphasis frames should work in these ways only in some policy areas. Moreover, the random intercepts for the 50 diverse issues assessed in the article control for unobserved heterogeneity in the political situation that might affect the success of camp frames.

Conclusion

Whether and how framing affects who prevails in political discussions is central to understanding some of the core questions of “who gets what, when, how” (Lasswell, 1950) in politics. Advocates lobbying for or against policy change on an issue try to frame it in a way to bring about favored outcomes, yet existing studies show that these individual frames are typically ineffective (Baumgartner et al., 2009; Mahoney, 2008). Nonetheless, as this article has shown, this does not mean that framing is insignificant for understanding advocacy success. On the contrary, according to our results, emphasis framing is highly significant for the success of advocacy efforts, yet it is collective framing at the camp level that matters rather than individual framing.

Based on existing qualitative work on framing, this article has formulated a theory on the mechanisms that underlie framing effects on advocacy success that links individual framing efforts by advocates to collective forces of issue definition. We hypothesized that emphasis framing by the advocate’s camp is more likely to increase the likelihood for the actor to succeed than individual framing (H1) and that it matters how much the camp of an actor frames the issue in unity (H1), with what frequency it promotes its dominant frame (H3), and, finally, whether the frame dominantly promoted by the camp also comes to dominate the issue vis-à-vis the opposing camp (H4). By analyzing the promotion of five generic emphasis frames across a large number of diverse policy issues in the media arena, we presented strong support for three of these hypotheses: Indeed, advocacy success of individual actors is crucially affected not by whether they themselves manage to attach an emphasis frame to their advocated policy position in the media, but by the collective framing efforts of the camp of actors lobbying for the same policy outcome as them. Furthermore, we showed that it matters for the individual advocate to what extent her camp frames the issue consistently with one voice, and whether the camp wins the struggle of defining the issue in relation to the opposing camp. In contrast, the frequency with which the camp promotes its dominant emphasis frame has no positive effect on actor’s preference attainment.

We have thus provided clear evidence that not just lobbying in general, but framing, in particular, is “a collective enterprise” (Klüver, 2013) in which the efforts of like-minded groups matter. We demonstrate that advocates are dependent, not only on the strength of the groups lobbying on the same side (Klüver, 2013; Mahoney & Baumgartner, 2015) but also on how like-minded groups communicate about the issue and whether this framing comes to prevail over the opposing camp. Importantly, this means that strategic framing by advocates must go beyond an actor’s own communication, but include a strategy to collectively voice frames with other like-minded groups. Camp-level framing by the opposing positional sides on an issue is thus a relevant link between the individual and aggregate level of framing on policy issues that helps us understand how policy outcomes on an issue are collectively shaped by advocates. Yet, while camp size and camp resources may follow a simple logic of the more the merrier, camp-level framing is more complex in its effects, as we have shown. It seems to be camp unity and issue dominance rather than framing quantity that matters for lobbying success. So, in the example of nuclear power we started out with, the consistency of the framing “story” and the success of frames promoted by the pro or antinuclear lobby in dominating the issue debate in different countries may, according to our results, be a part in the puzzle of understanding varying policy outcomes and advocacy success across countries.

In interpreting these results, it needs to be acknowledged that we worked with a strict definition and operationalization of preference attainment as a binary variable, which was enabled by a selection of issues from opinion polls that align in terms of binary outcomes. Consequently, we measure “hard” success in terms of a predefined policy result, thus arguably putting the effects of framing to a hard test. Yet, it is also conceivable that framing works to achieve smaller successes in the desired policy direction, say for instance, side-deals or exceptions to general legislation, albeit an undesired policy passes. In this sense, our measure is likely to underestimate “softer” framing successes, and results should be read in these “hard” terms.

Moreover, as Boräng et al. (2014) show, analyzing the same data with different methods to capture frames can affect the number of frames identified, especially depending on the level of abstraction in the frames, so results need to be interpreted relative to the respective mode of coding and aggregation. We chose an empirical strategy of capturing five generic emphasis frames that have broad applicability across policy issues, and our analysis tapped into the ways of how the collective use of these emphasis frames at the camp level is related to lobbying success. There is certainly scope for extending our approach to consider additional types of frames, and the relationship between framing and advocacy success in venues beyond the media. Still, given our quasi-random sampling of 50 diverse issues in five countries and our focus on the characteristics of collective emphasis framing (rather than on differences between exact frames), our conclusions can hopefully inform more generally about relationships between advocacy success and collective emphasis framing. Based on these findings, future research could, for instance, assess more closely how the dominant frames of competing camps interact, as well as address how active cooperation between like-minded advocacy groups potentially helps them succeed by coordinating a framing strategy. Our theory and findings underline the importance of expanding research of collective framing at the level of advocacy camps.

Author Biographies

Wiebke Marie Junk is PhD fellow at the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on interest group coalitions, public policy and government responsiveness.

Anne Rasmussen is professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen and affiliated to the Department of Public Administration at Leiden University. Her current research analyzes interest representation, policy responsiveness, political parties and agenda setting.

Appendix

Selection of Frames

Any capturing of frames aggregates complex social narratives, and there is no single right level of simplification and aggregation (Boräng et al., 2014). We opted for a level of abstraction that is sufficiently general to facilitate comparison across a large number of policy issues from different policy areas. After consulting existing work on generic frames in lobbying research (Klüver, Mahoney, & Opper, 2015; Mahoney, 2008) and broader coding schemes in the analysis of claims making (de Wilde, Koopmans, & Zürn, 2014), we selected a total of five priority frames, which capture prominent priorities voiced by advocates. These are as follows:

• SAFETY refers to the integrity of persons, states, or other bodies from threats like violence, or risks to public or consumer health.

• RIGHTS captures the protection or promotion of human or other rights or alleviation of human suffering.

• ECONOMY is about fostering wealth, prosperity, and economic growth or avoiding facing adverse economic effects.

• ENVIRONMENT captures conserving the environment or protecting the climate.

• CULTURE refers to conserving traditions, values, and cultural heritage.

The first four categories overlap with existing schemes (Klüver et al., 2015), while we added Culture against the background of potentially increasing cultural conservatism in European countries.