Policy Framing and Comparative Discourse Analysis

What is it about?

This article is an exploratory comparative case study on anti-discrimination ordinances (ADOs) that focuses on the 2014 Quezon City Gender-Fair Ordinance (QCGFO) and the 2017 Anti-Discrimination Ordinance of the City of Baguio (ADOCB). It addresses the question: “how do the QCGFO and ADOCB compare in terms of their formulation and framing to address discrimination?” In the formulation and framing of the QCGFO, the utilization of human rights-based rhetoric served as the dominant discourse to support its passage, relative to other policy frames. Comparatively, key political actors concerned with the formulation and framing of the ADOCB also highlighted a pragmatic socio-economic framing of the ordinance alongside the utilization of human rights rhetoric. This article discusses two political framing strategies for legislating ADOs as either directly targeted to a specific socially marginalized group such as the LGBT+ community, i.e., the QCGFO, or multi-sectoral with its approach to include multiple socially marginalized sectors, i.e., the ADOCB. In the end, this article seeks to contribute to the literature on anti-discrimination policy-making and intersectionality by providing exploratory insights regarding how different policy frames were applied to pursue two different anti-discrimination policies in two similar local contexts in the Philippines.

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Photo by Johan Rickardo Roxas on Unsplash

Photo by Johan Rickardo Roxas on Unsplash