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Conflicts over mitigation measures involve processes of contentious governance in which governmental and non-governmental players contest policies proposed or implemented by other governmental players or their business partners. Comparing a case of carbon capture and storage (CCS) with that of a nearshore windfarm in the Netherlands, I ask: how did local governmental players and their non-governmental allies succeed in getting the CCS project in Barendrecht taken off the table, while unable to block plans for the nearshore windfarm off the coast of Katwijk, Noordwijk and Zandvoort? Focusing on persuasion, I find that rhetorical framing based on expertise and 'not in my backyard' (NIMBY) escapist framing did not make much difference in either case. In the CCS case, a process of scaling up procedural critique to the national level led to repeal of the plan. A similar process did not happen in the windfarm case.

AbstractPolicy conflict is gaining attention in policy studies. In this paper, we explore the relation between emotional storylines and policy conflict escalation in the case of the Dutch gasquakes in the north of the country. Based on a longitudinal analysis of emotional storylines in 1308 newspaper articles and additional empirical data we find that Dutch subnational governmental actors as well as citizen action groups discursively express emotional storylines about anxiety/fear, anger, and contempt in relation to discursive expressions of trustworthiness/distrust. Over time, specific combinations of these emotional storylines shape the interpretation of the problem and point toward responsible actors. Also the way in which specific sequences of emotional storylines develop (particularly from fear to anger) suggests a discursive escalation. In addition, discursive escalation can be found in the increased intensity of specific emotional storylines. We conclude that the combinations, sequencing and increasing intensity of the emotional storylines suggest a process of emotionally expressed escalation, which we have only just begun to explore.

This article reviews how activation policies frame citizens as individual welfare agents. The analysis focuses on the framing of feeling rules employed by governments that encourage active citizenship, in this instance in the Netherlands and England. In England, encouraging voluntarism is central to the Big Society agenda; in the Netherlands, it is at the heart of the 2007 Social Support Act and more recent ideas on citizenship. Governments cannot compel their citizens to volunteer their time; they can, however, try to seduce people by playing on their emotions. Based on an analysis of thirty-nine policy documents and political speeches, we find that English politicians employ 'empowerment talk' calculated to trigger positive feelings about being active citizens, while Dutch politicians employ 'responsibility talk' conveying negative feelings about failure to participate more actively in society. Responsibility talk runs the risk that citizens respond with counter-responsibility claims, whereas empowerment talk can fail to incite sufficient enthousiasm among citizens.

This article focuses on the conflictual relations at the heart of what we call 'municipal contestation'. This global phenomenon sees cities and other local governments – sometimes together with non-governmental players – contest policies proposed or implemented by higher governmental authorities, which they perceive as threats to their policy positions or local communities. Bridging public policy studies and social movement theory, we develop a new typology identifying conservative, moderate and radical ideal types of municipal contestation. In addition, we explore the dynamics of contestation, with municipalities 'moving away' from the institutional status quo when they shift from conservative to more moderate and radical forms of contestation, or 'moving towards' the status quo when they find it difficult to sustain such action. The article illustrates this typology and contestation dynamics by drawing on case studies involving resistance to central COVID-19 restrictions in England; municipal opposition to carbon capture and storage in the Netherlands; and a European campaign against a proposed European Union-United States trade agreement. We conclude how this general framework can be applied, refined, and adapted for further comparative and longitudinal studies.