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A constructivist understanding of policy production as a struggle of meaning in which ideas and actors interact is the point of departure of this thesis. Prostitution policy is a salient example of such a struggle and is thus a suitable case for exploring the role of ideas in politics. The purpose of the thesis is threefold: to explain the process preceding the Swedish ban on the purchase of sexual services in 1998, to understand the dynamics in gendered policy and to develop a framework for policy analysis. In the first part of the thesis a dynamic model of frame analysis is developed consisting of three dimensions to analyze: the politically relevant ideas in terms of policy frames (in this case related to gender and power); ideas as restricting and facilitating for actors; actors' framing strategies and the consequences of strategic framing in terms of risks and limitations. This comprehensive and dynamic model of frame analysis fills a gap in previous policy research. In the second part of the thesis the dynamic frame analysis is applied to explain Swedish prostitution policy. The empirical analysis contains a study of the policy process preceding the ban of 1998, a micro study of the actors' involvement at a critical juncture and an analysis of the actors' strategic framing. The thesis concludes that the process was path dependent in the sense that the institutionalization of different ideas, at different points of time, was important for the final outcome. However, the thesis also concludes that the involvement of the actors', mostly women, was a decisive factor. In relation to previous research the analysis provides a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the policy process both with regard to the ideas from which the client criminalization claim emanated and also with regard to the actors' role.

This thesis investigates the role of ideas in policy processes. It does so using three theories as a starting point, selected for being alike yet unique in their description of how ideas may "get stuck" in the organization's production and reproduction of policy. The theories are Discourse Coalition Framework, Advocacy Coalition Framework, and Punctuated Equilibrium Theory. These theories have very different emphases but share constructivist traits and an interest in how social processes of meaning making take form in a rather "traditional" organizational setting, thus paying attention to, if not reducing the study to, the institutions of representative democracy. Two theoretical problems are identified within these theories. They concern 1) the mechanism and 2) the object of analysis. The theoretical question addressed in part I is: How are we to understand the proposition that ideas may cause stability in policy processes? What is the underlying mechanism? It is argued that the cognitive mechanism which the theories use should be substituted with a social psychological one. The assumption that stability is created when political actors conform to the ideas of others when they are confronted with apparent unanimity among policy makers, rather than that they internalize these ideas, makes both greater stability and instability in policy processes more plausible. Part II poses the question; if we are to investigate policy stability and instability using the discussed theoretical perspective, what unit of analysis should we use? In other words, what is a policy? It is argued that if ideological stability is seen as an effect of how policy formulation is organized (as is argued in part I), then close attention must be paid to processual factors when it is decided what unit of policy, on what level, might be explained. It is furthermore argued that although we may theoretically form an idea about substantially coherent patterns of policy recognizable as a policy, which should result from stable organizational patterns of communication in the policy process, it remains an empirical question if and where these patterns can actually be found. An analysis of Swedish environmental policy is performed to allow for observations of the degree to which empirical evidence is consistent with the policy patterns predicted by the theoretical assumptions outlined in part one.

This thesis discusses an alternative to the conventional policy diffusion approach, i.e. the social constructivist translation perspective. Within the translation perspective, policy diffusion is defined as a process where meaning is constructed by temporally and spatially disembedding policy ideas from their previous context and using them as models for policy change in a new context. This brings attention to the importance of a deepened problematization of the policy concept, the actor-dependent character of translation, and to the fact that translation processes are always tied to a local context. Translation should be seen as open, continuous processes that never take place independently of the societal distribution of power. In the thesis a distinction is made between political and practical translation. Political translation processes takes place at field level in connection with authoritative decision-making, and are a question of how policy ideas are adapted to the given local political context. This discussion is followed by the creation of an analytical framework for the study of political translation. The framework combines concepts from Kingdon's version of the garbage-can model with concepts from neo-institutional theories. The functioning of the political translation framework is empirically illustrated by way of two case studies. The first study traces the Swedish methadone issue, from the introduction of the methadone maintenance treatment in 1966 to the end of 1980s when this form of treatment gained wider acceptance. The second study covers the Swedish family doctor issue, from the launch of the proposal by the Swedish Liberal Party in the election campaign of 1976 to the abolition of the Family Doctor Act in 1995.