Problem Frames During the Energy Crisis

Abstract

In the 1970s a situation of energy abundance and falling prices turned into one of shortages and escalating prices, greatly raising energy policy's salience. This short-run crisis opened a political opportunity to take a longer term look at energy sources and government support for them, as the crisis strained public confidence in the existing system. In short, the energy crisis was an opportunity to revise the existing problem frame and institutionalize a new set of ideas to guide that frame. The crisis did give rise to new energy policy institutions, and those institutions to some extent centralized energy policy making and gave a new institutional home to advocates of solar energy. Nonetheless, the core ideas driving energy policy at the presidential level changed very little, and the possibilities contained in the new institutions were never realized. Before turning to the official energy problem frame, it is important to understand the new institutional structures that helped to formulate and implement energy policy. My emphasis on debates within the White House does not imply that the White House alone set policy. Decades of studies have shown that there are many important actors in a political system as fragmented as that in the United States, such as executive branch agencies, Congress, interest groups, and the courts. That was as true in energy policy as in any other issue area. Nonetheless, one of the most important of those actors was the White House.