Abstract

In several ways, the following chapters will allude to the concept of frames. The assumptions of a mathematical model tell us what it can explain and what it cannot (see chapter 5). The trade-off between the usefulness of a mathemati- cal model and the scale of complexity it seeks to capture further conditions the narrative, highlighting or downsizing cognitive elements relevant to responsible modelling (see ‘Mathematics and tales’ in chapter 4). Yet, what determines the choice of a model, its assumptions, and its level of complexity? Answering these questions requires a more general perspective that involves frames—that is, the complex of cognitive schemes through which we reason and which we use to make sense of the world. The notion of the frame owes much to the tradition of social studies. Several disciplines have underlined the importance of worldviews and their causal rela- tionships in giving us the coordinates to classify the situations in which we find ourselves. Since public policies are constructs of considerable complexity, policy inquiry has paid great attention to the frames we use to organize information, ideas, and beliefs. For example, Campbell (2002), analysing the effects of ideas, worldviews, and cognitive paradigms on policy-making, defines frames as ‘nor- mative and sometimes cognitive ideas that are located in the foreground of policy debates’.

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