When the political leader is the narrator: the political and policy dimensions of narratives

Giliberto Capano (), Maria Tullia Galanti () and Giovanni Barbato ()
Additional contact information
Giliberto Capano: University of Bologna
Maria Tullia Galanti: University of Milan
Giovanni Barbato: University of Milan

Policy Sciences, 2023, vol. 56, issue 2, No 3, 233-265

Abstract: Abstract There is increasing interest in the role of narratives in policy-making, as evidenced by the consolidation of the Narrative Policy Framework, a theory of the policy process whose overall aim is to explain how policy narratives influence policy outcomes. However, with the focus on only policy narratives, there is a risk of underestimating the relationship between the policy dynamics in a specific subsystem and the pursuit of consent in the political arena. To attract more scholarly attention to this relationship, this paper distinguishes between two types of narratives—the political narrative and the policy narrative. It focuses on how political leaders address the trade-off between the content of their political and policy narratives, not only adding analytical and theoretical leverage to the Narrative Policy Framework but also providing a fine-grained comprehension of the multilayered dynamics of narratives in politics. Our main assumption is that political leaders continuously address relationships and the eventual trade-off between their political narratives (the stories through which they shape the preferences of public opinion by proposing their general political vision) and their policy narratives (the stories they tell to shape the policy process and its outputs). The way leaders decide between these trade-offs can make a significant difference in terms of political and policy outputs. We test this assumption with a comparison of the use of narratives by the same political leader in labour and education policies in Italy.

Keywords: Political leaders; Political narratives; Narrative policy framework; Comparative public policy; Labour market reform; Education reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11077-023-09505-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:policy:v:56:y:2023:i:2:d:10.1007_s11077-023-09505-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11077/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11077-023-09505-6

Access Statistics for this article

Policy Sciences is currently edited by Michael Howlett

More articles in Policy Sciences from Springer, Society of Policy Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().