Despite extensive debate on the influence of discourse on environmental politics, research has yet fully to reveal how discursive processes affect policy change on issues like climate change. Discourse‐related approaches are also often criticised for critiquing current policy situations but paying limited attention to utilising communication studies to enable policy change. This article explores how narrative policy analysis—a linguistic technique for analysing policy issues where uncertainty and complexity have bred polarisation—can be utilised to recast disputes over climate policy in ways that facilitate compromise and policy change. As a focus, we examine disputes surrounding the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme, drawing on elite interviews and documentary analysis to analyse contrasting narratives about the scheme's effectiveness in reducing greenhouse‐gas emissions. The first portrays New Zealand as a trade‐exposed country that makes only minor contributions to global emissions to defend cautious and low‐cost policy. Its rival advocates stronger domestic action even if this entails higher costs. Mapping the contentions, assumptions, and characterisations in these narratives, combined with analysis of recent policy developments, reveal important insights on how narrative policy analysis can be used to enhance understandings of policy change, particularly, the difficulties of attacking opponents' “anchoring narratives”; how analysing minor narratives and differences in narrative alliances can assist in overcoming barriers to policy change; how narrative changes and “narrative diplomacy” prepare the ground for policy change; and the importance of examining issues neglected in polarised debates on climate policy.

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更改记录：叙事政策分析和新西兰的排放权交易政治

尽管人们对讨论对环境政治的影响进行了广泛的辩论，但研究尚未充分揭示出话语过程如何影响诸如气候变化等问题的政策变化。与话语相关的方法也常常因批评当前的政策状况而受到批评，但很少注意利用传播研究来推动政策变革。本文探讨了叙事性政策分析（一种用于分析不确定性和复杂性导致两极分化的政策问题的语言技术）如何可以通过促进妥协和政策变化的方式来重塑有关气候政策的争议。重点是，我们会根据精英访谈和文献分析来审查有关新西兰排放交易计划的纠纷，以分析有关该计划的对比叙述。减少温室气体排放的有效性。第一个将新西兰描述为贸易暴露国家，仅对全球排放做出很小的贡献，以捍卫谨慎和低成本的政策。它的竞争对手主张采取更大的国内行动，即使这样做需要付出更高的代价。映射这些叙述中的论点，假设和特征，结合对最新政策发展的分析，揭示出关于如何使用叙述性政策分析来增进对政策变化的理解的重要见解，尤其是攻击对手“锚定式叙述”的困难; 分析次要叙事和叙事联盟的差异如何帮助克服政策变革的障碍；叙事变革和“叙事外交”如何为政策变革奠定基础；