Political Information Has Bright Colors: Narrative Attention Theory

Abstract

Attention plays an important role in driving policy process dynamics at multiple levels of analysis. Despite this, narrative policy process studies often center on the position that narrative is strategically used in subsystem debates because it alters policy beliefs and preferences. This paper explicates the relationship between narrative and attention in the policy process according to theory and empirical findings in the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET) and Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) literatures, developing a theory of narrative attention. According to Narrative Attention Theory (NAT), narrative focuses attention at multiple levels of analysis in the policy process, but is most important to consider at the macro level, where preferences are most stable. In associating PET's notion of macro political institutions (e.g., executive branch) and NPF's macro level of analysis (institutions or culture), NAT offers new hypotheses about narrative dynamics, a PET macro institutional approach to NPF's macro level, and an NPF conceptualization of PET's policy image.