While receiving more attention in the policy sciences in recent years, much remains unknown about policy conflicts. This research analyzes 48 in-depth qualitative interviews of people involved in, or familiar with, conflicts associated with shale oil and gas (aka “fracking”) policy proposals and decisions across 15 U.S. states. We ask the question: how do policy actors characterize policy conflicts? To guide interviews and data collection for this study, we rely on the Policy Conflict Framework (PCF). The PCF highlights how policy settings serve as the sources of conflict; the characteristics of policy conflict across settings, between policy actors, and over time; and the varying outcomes. Insights derived from interviews include that policy conflicts are far more complicated to portray than depicted in the literature, individuals shape and understand conflict through emotions and narratives, any descriptions of policy conflicts must account for time and their evolutionary nature, and conflicts involve diverse strategies of winning and mitigation. The conclusion links these findings to the literature to advance knowledge about policy conflict.

尽管近年来政策科学受到越来越多的关注，但政策冲突仍然有很多未知之处。这项研究分析了美国 15 个州参与或熟悉页岩油气（又名“水力压裂”）政策提案和决策相关冲突的人士的 48 次深入定性访谈。我们提出这样的问题：政策行为者如何描述政策冲突的特征？为了指导本研究的访谈和数据收集，我们依靠政策冲突框架（PCF）。 PCF 强调政策设置如何成为冲突的根源；跨环境、政策行为者之间以及随着时间的推移政策冲突的特征；以及不同的结果。从访谈中得出的见解包括，政策冲突的描述比文献中描述的要复杂得多，个人通过情感和叙述来塑造和理解冲突，对政策冲突的任何描述都必须考虑到时间及其演变性质，冲突涉及不同的政策冲突策略。获胜和缓解。结论将这些发现与文献联系起来，以增进对政策冲突的了解。