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The Importance of Policy Frames in Contentious Politics: Mexico's National Antihomophobia Campaign

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Jordi Díez
Jordi Díez*
Affiliation:
University of Guelph
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Abstract

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Despite the fact that the election of Vicente Fox to the presidency of Mexico in 2000 saw the arrival of the most socially conservative administration in contemporary Mexican politics, his government launched the country's first nationwide antihomophobia campaign in early 2005. This article attempts to solve this seeming policy puzzle by presenting empirical research evidence that suggests that the formulation and implementation of this policy was largely a result of the ability of several advocates of sexual minority rights to pursue this policy initiative from within government. Because Fox's election also saw a significant opening of the policy process, several “policy entrepreneurs” gained access to the policy-making process. However, given the controversial nature of the policy they pursued, policy entrepreneurs relied on the deployment of two policy frames to implement their policy in the face of fierce opposition: a scientific frame and a legal frame. The research presented here reveals that the successful launch of the campaign was the result of the strategic use of these two frames by an alliance of policy entrepreneurs working from within the state across federal bureaucratic agencies. Given the advantage the two frames afforded their case when confronting arguments based on morality, they ultimately managed to overcome fierce opposition from state and nonstate actors to implement their policy.

Resumen

Resumen

A pesar de que la elección de Vicente Fox a la presidencia de México en 2000 produjo la llegada del gobierno más conservador en la política contemporánea de México, su gobierno lanzó la primera campaña nacional contra la homofobia en 2005. Este artículo intenta resolver esta aparente paradoja presentando los resultados de una investigación los cuales indican que la elaboración y la implementación de esta iniciativa se debió a la habilidad de un grupo de defensores de los derechos de minorías sexuales quienes prosiguieron esta política desde adentro del gobierno. Dado que la elección de Fox también produjo una apertura en el proceso de la hechura de políticas públicas, varios emprendedores de política pública se bastaron del despliegue de dos marcos de política pública en su implementación cuando encontraron una oposición fuerte a su iniciativa: un marco científico y un marco legal. La investigación que aquí se presenta sugiere que le exitoso lanzamiento de la campaña fue el resultado del uso estratégico de los dos marcos de política pública desde adentro del gobierno a través de varias agencias de burocráticas. Cuando enfrentaron una fuerte oposición proveniente de actores estatales y no estatales, los emprendedores lograron superarla para finalmente implementar su política pública dada la ventaja que estos dos marcos les brindaron cuando los confrontaron con argumentos morales.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , 2010 , pp. 33 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association

Footnotes

A previous version of this article was presented at the 2007 International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association in Montreal. I thank Susan Franceschet, Miriam Smith and the anonymous LARR reviewers for their invaluable comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript. Any errors of analysis and interpretation are solely my own. Funding for this research from Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council is gratefully acknowledged.

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