Discursive Black and Translucent Box Frames of Policy Work: How do Practitioners and Scholars Compare?

Policy work in government is often framed as existing in a "black box". It is assumed that public administrators, as "insiders", have more knowledge of policy development processes than those outside of government. Are black box narratives of policy work constructed by practitioners? Or is the idea of a "translucent" box more appropriate to understand policy work within the bureaucracy? Based on interviews with sub-national civil servants in one provincial government in Canada, this article finds that black box narratives are used by practitioners to understand policy work. I interpret these results to argue that a theory-practice gap does not necessarily exist when it comes to constructions of policy work: practitioners in the field, like scholars, employ black box narratives to frame policy work in the bureaucracy. Yet, academics may still find that translucent box theory provides a more nuanced way of understanding government's internal policy processes.