Fathers at a Crossroads: The Combined Effect of Organizational and Cultural Factors on the Making of Gender-Related Policy

Ideational explanations of social policy formation have gained a prominent role in the analysis of social policy formation in recent decades. Of late, researchers have taken up the task of creating explanations that combine ideational explanations with non-ideational ones. In this work, I will try to address this task at the intra-organizational level, creating an explanation for policy formation within a welfare state institution while taking into account both ideational and organizational factors. This method will be demonstrated using the legislative debate over the parental leave for fathers in Israel as a case study. The formation process of this program was long and complex, and included a struggle about the program’s existence and its shape. This process allows us to look into the institutional interests of various participants shaping the struggle over the program. Coincidently, it offers a look into the cultural perceptions of those participants—operationalized as policy frames—and the effect these perceptions have on policy formation. This dual view provides an insight into the inter-relation and inter-dependence of both factors. This analytical framework creates a rich explanation, combining both types of analysis, showing how, at times, policy makers adopt perceptions most fitting their institutional interests, while at other times, policy frames serve as the basis for determining institutional interests.