How to manage frame conflicts?

Schön & Rein (99, 0) point out that there is no way of falsifying a frame. No data can be produced that would conclusively disconfirm it in the eyes of a qualified, objective observer. This is because if objective means frame-neutral, there are no objective observers.

There is no way of perceiving and making sense of social reality except through a frame.

The question is then, how can frame conflicts be addressed, settled or resolved?

Putnam & Wondolleck (00, 57–58) identify three approaches to alter the frames and hence the direction of intractable conflicts towards better tractability. External changes, such as the appearance of a common enemy or a common hazard, can lead to changes in frames and hence in moving the conflict toward tractability (naturally, such changes can also lead to increased intractability). Internal shifts in the conflict itself, on the other hand, can occur when the parties choose to abandon their behavioural patterns of escalation and seek more co-operative approaches. For instance, if an aggressive comment by one party is encountered by a constructive reaction from another party, the dynamics of the conflict may change towards tractability.

Working to make conscious changes in framing is a third way to transform the fundamental nature of the conflict. Through dialogue, changes in the conflict, identity, characterization and conflict management frames can occur that help parties acknowledge their roles in perpetuating intractability and help them develop new interpretations of the conflict and move toward tractability (Putnam & Wondolleck 00, 57–58). Schön &

Rein (99) call this process frame reflection. They propose that one way to overcome frame problems of policy controversies is a situated, frame reflective policy practice. One possible approach is “mapping”, or translating from one frame to another. This can help the parties to make an informed choice among their frames. Alternatively, they may be able to synthesize elements of the different frames in a new jointly constructed frame. This approach is similar to what Roe (99) calls constructing a meta-narrative that consists of elements that all the conflicting narratives (frames) have in common.

However, Schön & Rein (99, 8–0) note that the relationship between frame reflection, reframing, and the resolution of policy controversies is not straightforward.

Frame reflection may serve merely to reinforce stalemate or antagonism, if a party uses frame reflection to learn to better counter the others’ arguments. Depending on how the dialogue between parties to a conflict is organised and facilitated, it can either lead parties to re-establish their battle lines or help them to find practical options to work together (Saarikoski 006, 69).

Reframing, on the other hand, may not come about as a consequence of frame reflection but as a by-product of actions taken for other purposes, such as the internal shifts described by Putnam and Wondolleck. Frames may evolve and change as institutional practices change, quite unintentionally and with little awareness of shifts in attitudes (Miller 000, 7–8). If the initial motivation for practices becomes highly ‘black-boxed’, changes to those practices may introduce frame changes without any intention or recognition on the part of a given community. Likewise, institutional practices may

24 If a frame is defined as the interpretation of reality, then ”reflection” is interpretation of interpretation (Alvesson & Sköldberg 000).

persist long after the ideas and value judgments on which they were originally based on have lost credibility. Practices may be adjusted ad hoc in order to get rid of a conflict or a problem, but without changes taking place in how the situation is framed (Laws & Rein 00, 0).

Efforts to create collective strategies such as frame reflection require that those involved take a major leap in reflexive activity (Healey 997, ). In order to reframe one’s understanding of the conflict, people need to take some perspective to their view on things. They need to overcome the blindness caused by their own way of framing a situation and to accept that there is more than one view on the issue. As long as the parties believe that their own view is the only possible to understand the issues in a dispute, they cannot reframe. (Schön & Rein 997, 87; Gray 00, .) Gray (00) notes that since reframing requires perspective taking it is often difficult without the help of a neutral third party.

Schön & Rein (99) call the ability to step back and reflect, while involved in practice, double vision. Human beings can reflect and learn about the game of policy making even as they play it. They are, if aware of the phenomenon called frames, capable of reflecting in action on the frame conflicts that underlie controversies and account for their intractability. However, in order to try to understand each other’s views, the parties must be motivated to sit down and try to learn from each other. Why would they do that?

But even if they wanted to, how could a discourse across frames be possible?

The incentive to seek common ground has been one of the main foci of various alternative and consensual environmental dispute resolution or settlement approaches⁵ developed in North America since the 970s. The aim of these approaches has been to put an end to enduring conflict episodes in a way that would allow the commitment of all relevant stakeholders to the resolution and thus avoid litigation⁶ or political action that cause an impasse in decision-making and implementation of projects and policies (Crowfoot & Wondolleck 990; Gunton & Day 00). The aim of dispute resolution is to achieve a greater satisfaction by all through win-win solutions. In order for the parties to enter the negotiation table, they need to perceive their best alternative to negotiated agreement (BATNA) as poorer that the potential solution provided by the negotiation process.

The advocates of such processes draw upon negotiation theory and the legal practice of labour management disputes, which emphasise the possibility of finding joint gains by trading off those items that are low cost for one party and high cost for the other. A mediator is often used as a neutral third party, who explores how the negotiation “pie”

may be enlarged and trade offs made to find a win-win solution. (Fisher & Ury 98;

Sussking & Cruickshank 987; Schön & Rein 99, 6–7; Gunton & Day 00.) Schön & Rein (99, 6–) express, however, scepticism as to the capacity of mediated negotiations to deal with frame conflicts. For one, mediation is often only considered possible in disputes over distribution of costs and benefits. Disputes over “constitutional”

issues, such as rights and duties, basic values or yes/no issues (abortion, nuclear energy), are in contrast often considered ill-suited for mediation.(Susskind & Cruickshank 987, 7.) Yet it is these conflicts, maintain Schön & Rein, that are of greatest importance

25 Alternative dispute resolution (ADR), environmental dispute resolution (EDR)

26 It should be noted that litigation has been more characteristic to environmental disputes in the U.S.

than in many European countries, particularly the Nordic countries. In Finland, litigation has not been common in environmental conflicts due to the different type of legal system than in the U.S.

(This will be discussed in more detail in Chapter .) Possibly as a consequence, EDR has not been used in Finland and the profession of educated mediators does not exist.

to address. Secondly, they criticise mediated negotiation for assuming fixed interests over which the parties can carry out trade-offs. This assumption is essential for win-win bargaining, because it would be difficult for a mediator to develop successful approaches to achieving joint gains if the participants’ gains were unstable. Yet this is exactly the point of frame theory. The mediated negotiation approach ignores the existence of frames that play a central role in what the parties perceive as being their interests. When participants in a negotiation change the ways in how they represent the policy issue or situation with which they are dealing, they are also likely to change the definition of their interests.

In fact, as Schön & Rein maintain, some intractable disputes are only resolvable if the participants change their views on what their interests are (Schön & Rein 99, 6–7, 87.)⁷

Another commonly used approach to conflicts is collaborative planning. As was mentioned in the introduction in Chapter , the overall trend in environmental decision-making and related theory over the last few decades has involved an emphasis on increased participation of affected citizens in planning and decision-making, already before disputes emerge or become escalated. This trend is in part explained by the will to improve democracy, but it is also driven by the need to anticipate or resolve disputes and to achieve decisions that can be implemented.

Collaborative planning approaches aim at anticipating conflicts by promoting a deeper involvement of the different actors throughout the planning process. In contrast to “conventional” public participation methods, such as public hearings and collection of written statements⁸, these consensual problem-solving efforts use a higher level of collaboration between stakeholders who work together in face-to-face meetings to reach a consensus agreement – ideally in advance of disputes (Wondolleck & Yaffee 000; Gunton & Day 00). Selin & Chavez (995, 90) define “collaboration” as “a joint decision-making approach to problem resolution where power is shared and the stakeholders take collective responsibility for their actions and the subsequent outcomes from those actions.”

Collaborative environmental management (CEM), or collaborative natural resource planning, encourages the exploration of underlying differences in values and recognises the potential for joint values to emerge. It provides opportunities for addressing intangible concerns and relationship building, rather than simply concrete, immediate matters, and it allocates the responsibility for implementation across as many participants in the process as the situation warrants. Collaborative planning is an on-going process; the participants do not just meet once to discuss a difference and then disperse. However, collaborations may have a limited life span if the issues that brought the participants together are resolved. (Carpenter and Kennedy 988, 6–9; Walker & Daniels 997, 6; Susskind et al. 999.) Innes (00, 7–8) defines eight conditions in order for a process to be labelled as consensus-building:

27 Schön & Rein (99, 6–7, 87) note however that despite the theoretical incapability of mediation to recognise the changeability of interests, this is often what happens in practice when mediation is carried out, and that changes in frames may go a long way in explaining why mediation actually succeeds.

28Priscoli (997, 75) emphasises the importance of using appropriate tools and techniques for the expected behaviour. Resolving conflicts and agreeing to decisions requires, according to him, much more developed tools that conventional public participation has had to offer. As he remarks, “One of the worst events in participation is to apply one level of technique, such as public hearings, and expect that another level of behavior, agreeing to decisions, will occur.”

• Inclusion of full range of stakeholders;

• A task that is meaningful to participants and likely to have a timely impact;

• Participants are able to set their own ground rules for behaviour agenda setting and decision-making;

• Mutual understanding of interests at the beginning of the process and avoidance of positional bargaining;

• A dialogue where everyone is equally heard and respected;

• A self-organising process unconstrained by conveners that permits all assumptions to be questioned;

• Accessible information that is fully shared among participants; and

• An understanding that ‘consensus’⁹ is only reached when all interests have been explored and every effort has been made to satisfy these concerns.

She maintains that achieving these conditions often requires a skilled and neutral facilitator.

When successful, CEM can provide a forum for public deliberation, where problems can be examined and interests and concerns revised (Healey 997; Forester 999). Saarikoski notes that it is here the proposed transformative potential of the argumentative approaches to conflict management exists:

“If actor’s beliefs and interests are constituted through discursive practices, new storylines can create new cognitions and hence influence actors’ view of their interests and preferences” (Saarikoski 006, 68).

However, both Saarikoski (006) and Schön & Rein (99, –50) highlight the risk that if deliberation takes place on a high level of abstraction it may be too far removed from the actual practice. Saarikoski found through her empirical studies that all attempts to facilitate a frame-reflective dialogue and to establish some share meta-cultural frame only served to highlight the differences between the parties (006, 67). In contrast, focusing on tangible questions helped to move things forward. Schön & Rein (99, 77–78) call such a pragmatic approach situated policy inquiry. It may be conducive to the resolution of frame conflicts because the inquirers tend to have an overriding interest in getting something done. Situated policy controversies also provide informational richness and variety on which actors may draw to invent strategies of pragmatic resolution. Furthermore, the institutional action frames are only loosely coupled with beliefs of individual actors, who can use this in order to improvise pragmatic resolution of their controversies. The controversies exist in local and global contexts whose shifts may foster pragmatic resolution, as proposed by Putnam & Wondolleck (00), and the combination of change and continuity can prove fruitful. Finally, if actors jointly engage in a process of policy design, each actor is obliged to interact and communicate with each other. (Schön & Rein 99, 77–78.)

One essential requirement for such a practice involves creating and maintaining conditions of mutual trust which is necessary to sustain frame-reflexive inquiry in a situation of controversy (Schön & Rein 99, 07). Saarikoski also noted that like so many other policy disputes, the waste policy debate in Finland was also about trust:

29 According to Innes consensus does not, in practice, refer to 00 percent agreement, but to

“overwhelming and diverse” majority of 80-90 percent of all stakeholders, with all major interests included (00, 7).

“The opponents’ haste to dismiss and stereotype each other prevented them from discovering that, despite their differences, they also agreed on several issues […] Hence, given the importance of credibility, respect, and identities in frame controversies, the challenge of deliberative processes is to create ‘safe places’ (Innes & Booher 999) where parties can start to build trust and cultivate deliberative virtues of listening and reciprocity (Saarikoski 006, 68).”

Trust has been found to be one of the most important factors enabling collaborative behaviour, which can in turn produce innovative outcomes needed in conflict management (Leskinen L. 00, 7). Indeed, it has been said that trust is the ‘glue’ or ‘lubricant’ of co-operation in modern societies (Misztal 996, 77–87).

Gillroy (000, 0–05), basing his view in Kant’s philosophy, argues that humans have both the capacity and the will to co-operate for the public good as well as the tendency towards indulgence of one’s self-interest . He maintains that it is the perception of the agent of each situation that is decisive for which side of the human character becomes dominant. If under stress, fear, or suspicion, “a moral agent might find that his or her rationality as well as practical reason make self-preservation a priority” (Gillroy 000, 0). It may also be the case that if an actor feels that they are powerful enough to make unanimous decisions, they may be less likely to seek co-operative strategies. On the other hand, if an actor can be assured of the co-operation of others (or cannot reach the desired goal without it), (s)he is more likely to choose co-operative strategies. The challenge is, how to be assured that if one co-operate, the others will do so as well. This is an issue of assurance, or trust.

The characteristics of a collaborative and a competitive approach are described in Table . Collaboration and competition form two ends of a continuum, as conflict situations are inherently mixed motive; in any conflict situation there is some incentive to both, most situations are neither purely competitive nor cooperative. Natural resource agencies, for example, are restricted by the agency goals and priorities at the same time as they try to accommodate the interests of various stakeholders. Therefore the strategies the parties use tend to be mixed. (Walker & Daniels 997, 5.)

Table 3. Collaborative and competitive strategies in conflict situations (Walker & Daniels 997)

Collaborative Competitive

Goal Mutual gain Self benefit

Resource view Expandable (all-gain) Fixed Pie (win-lose)

Relationship Valued Unimportant

View of Other Partner Adversary

Communication Open Controlled

Trust High Limited

Power Shared Coveted

The problem is that many disputes related to natural resource use and environmental protection escalate over time to the point where individual actors no longer trust each other in the sense that they would be assured of the co-operative behaviour of the others (Kyllönen et al. 006). The escalation of a dispute can be caused by several factors, including lack of direct communication or failed attempts to resolve the issue. The stage of mutual distrust can be described as an assurance problem. Under such circumstances people are more likely to change the strategies into non-co-operative ones, even when this will be at the expense of their own goals. (Gillroy 000, 00–7.)

How then to promote trust and co-operative strategies? Gillroy considers it the duty of the state to protect and empower the moral predisposition to cooperate by assuring actors that their moral actions will not be unilateral (000, 6–65). Fostering trust is something that largely depends on the actions of the public administrator in a particular planning or dispute resolution process. But the actions of the public administrator outside or prior to that process are equally important. Gillroy considers it the task of the state and the public administrator to protect, distribute and provide conditions that enable actors to adopt co-operative strategies instead of non-co-operative ones. This is called politics of assurance (Gillroy 000, 05–06, 60). It consists of a set of public institutions and regulations that provide the material conditions for the protection and empowerment of the moral capacities of the citizens (Gillroy 000, ). Instead of having to trust the other individuals, actors can then trust ‘the rules of the game’, or the abstract system (Giddens 98, 80–88).⁰

Legal protection and principles of good governance are examples of the most fundamental elements of such public institutions and regulations in constitutional states.

In the Finnish Constitution (7/999, section ), for example, “politics of assurance”

includes publicity of proceedings, the right to be heard, the right to receive a reasoned decision and the right of appeal.

I see the development of so-called ‘safe places’ and promotion of trust as an important link between dispute resolution, frame analysis and institutional analysis in conflict management. Through institutional design the state can promote practices that enhance trust and provide safe places, thus allowing for frame reflection to take place. It is now time to turn to institutional theory to find tools for analysing the ‘safe places’ in the Finnish forest conflict management strategies.

30 Giddens maintains that although modern societies are largely built upon trust in abstract systems, the trust of citizens towards the system is also dependent on contacts with the representatives of such systems. There is an interaction between trust on individuals and on systems: the “faceless”

commitments to abstract systems are sustained and transformed by “facework commitments “with individuals. (Giddens 98, 8–88.) Giddens considers it particularly important how individual representatives’ of, for example, public authorities’ behavior is experienced by the citizens. If lost, the trust towards the system can be even more difficult to re-establish than trust towards individuals (Saaristo 000), which makes the politics of assurance an even greater challenge.

4 THE NEW INSTITUTIONALIST