Abstract
Simple indicative factors such as political populism and resource abundance cannot fully explain the Scottish Government's anti-nuclear energy policy. To grasp the current policy stance, it is necessary to pay attention to the wider contextualisation of policy framing and specifically the dynamic of story-telling and frame-bridging that ultimately feeds into governmental policy. The Scottish Government's decisive ‘no’ to a new nuclear fleet can be better understood by considering the underlying (and deliberate) bridging of policy frames that is noticeable between environmental, pacifist, and Scottish independence actors. This bridging not only affects the individual sets of story-telling but also develops a dynamic that reinforces individual stories and transcends well beyond the groups' original remit and objectives. With the help of policy framing analysis, research interviews and documentary analysis, the article explores the dynamic connections between anti-nuclear and independence activists and their causes in Scotland. The article highlights their triangular bridges in terms of personnel, language and story-telling and argues that these are instrumental in shaping the Scottish Government's anti-nuclear energy policy.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 194-211 |
| Journal | Scottish Affairs |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Early online date | 12 Apr 2017 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 May 2017 |
Keywords
- Frame analysis
- Nuclear energy
- Scotland
- Politics
Access to Document
- Brown_2017_SA_FrameBridging_AAM
© 2017 Edinburgh University Press. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created accepted version manuscript following peer review and as such may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at: https://doi.org/10.3366/scot.2017.0178