Framing the housing crisis: How think-tanks frame politics and science to advance policy agendas

Abstract

In England, think-tanks have played a crucial role in framing the causes of unaffordable housing. Yet the logics of think-tanks, the reasons why they intervene publicly in the way that they do, remain unclear. Drawing on the social field theory of Pierre Bourdieu, this paper seeks to understand the framing strategies of think-tanks. Based on quantitative and qualitative textual analysis of five years’ worth of public interventions from three think-tanks, this paper demonstrates how the framing strategy adopted by a think-tank – that is the causal narrative and policy agenda it promotes, and the means it uses to promote it- can be partly explained by the amount and types of capital it possesses as an organisation, and its respective ties to the fields of science, politics and the media. In doing so, the paper illuminates some of the key structural logics which explain why some framings of the affordable housing crisis dominate others in the public and political domains.