Framing science: the Endangered Species Act and the Scientization of Politics

ABSTRACT

Science is a potent policymaking tool. This dynamic has been exacerbated by evidence-based policymaking, which requires that policymaking participants utilize scientific claims in their engagement to combat issues of uncertainty and ignorance. However, there is little understanding of how participants in EBPM interpret and deploy the science relevant to policies. Thus, this paper asks: how do evidence-based policymaking participants frame science? To identify scientific frames, I deployed structural topic modelling on 500,000 comments submitted by EBPM participants with regards to the Endangered Species Act, a powerful environmental law that is structured by EBPM requirements. Analyses find a diversity of scientific frames in ESA public comments, which have distinct styles and forms based on the types of commenters deploying them. These framings coalesce not only around scientific claims relevant to policymaking, but also varied understandings of legitimate forms of science. This indicates that science is a powerful framing resource that is adapted to meet contextual policymaking demands, interpreted to match actors’ interests, and intertwined with other framing resources, like moral, risk, or narrative claims. This paper thus identifies important dynamics regarding different actors’ responses to policymaking under uncertain conditions and poses fundamental questions of science’s use in policymaking.

KEYWORDS:

• Science
• framing
• evidence-based policymaking
• science-policy interface
• endangered species act

Acknowledgments

I thank Delia Baldassarri, Ankit Bhardwaj, Bart Bonikowski, Colin Jerolmack, Jeff Manza, Claire Sieffert, Belicia Teo, Diane Vaughan, & two anonymous reviewers for feedback on this paper. I am also indebted to the staff at NYU’s HPC and fellow students in NYU’s 2022-2023 Research & Writing course for support throughout this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data availability statement

Data will be made available upon request.

Geolocation information

United States

Notes

1. Exact processes for identifying and dividing commenter types are included in Appendix B.

2. See Appendix B for examples of organizational affiliates’ alterations of organizational comment templates.

3. See Appendix A for full topic model results.

4. Examples of comments exhibiting scientific frames are in Appendix C.

Additional information

Funding

The study was completed without funding from any external organizations.

Notes on contributors

Abby Westberry

Abby Westberry is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at New York University. Her research interests include environmental sociology, natural resource management, and nonhuman sociology. Her research is currently focused on local government responses to climate change and changing natural resource management systems.