Hay (2002) describes the role of frames as providing the ‘discursively
mediated access’ both to the issue at hand, and also to the institutional
environment. Schön and Rein (1994: 29) use the concept of frame
conflicts to denote controversies in which parties see issues and policies
(and institutions, I would add) in different and conflicting ways. The
way parties define the problem also affects their prescription of the solution
and strategies of conflict management. How actors behave – the
strategies they consider in the first place, the strategies they choose and
the policies they formulate – reflects their understanding of their context
and may eliminate a whole range of realistic alternatives (Hay,
2002: 211–213). This definition of frames is in my understanding not
far from the problem representations described by Bacchi (2009), as
both focus on the way policy problems are formulated and on the effects
these representations have on the prescription of solutions.