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Narrative Stories in the Authoritarian Environment: Channels of Communication and Strategies of Stakeholders in Recent Urban Public Transport Reform in Moscow

Interest Groups
Public Policy
Communication
Narratives
Political Regime
Tatiana Gabriichuk
National Research University, Higher School of Economics – HSE
Tatiana Gabriichuk
National Research University, Higher School of Economics – HSE
Dmitry Karateev
National Research University, Higher School of Economics – HSE
Mariia Makhmutova
National Research University, Higher School of Economics – HSE
Artem Uldanov
National Research University, Higher School of Economics – HSE

Abstract

The city of Moscow has seen large reforms in the field of public transport in recent years (privatisation of public transport lines, introduction of new routes, large investments into public transport infrastructural projects) and more reforms are planned (Moscow Metropolitan expansion, substitution of trolleybuses by electric buses, transition to Euro 5 ecological standard etc.). These reforms were advocated by the Moscow city government and some affiliated expert organisations (Transport Association of the Moscow Agglomeration, Moscow Automobile and Road Institute, Traffic Management Center) and opposed by the number of local politicians, independent NGOs and groups of citizens from the districts where the amount of public transport routes was cut due to proposed changes. In such an environment, where opposing parties are trying to make sure that their vision of the reforms will be the leading one, narrative stories are quite important to policy development as they establish an image of how public transport problems and policies must be defined and addressed. The narratives constructed by the pro-reform actors are expected to focus on increased accessibility of public transport, safety and ecological standards, whereas narratives against the reforms focus on poor management of public transport system, non-optimal prioritization and lack of systematic approach towards public transport development. In this paper we want to focus on channels and tools of communication that were used to promote narratives by different parties in a conditions of authoritarian regime. The current study presents the results and inferences related to analysis of narratives in Moscow’s public transport policy, reflecting the interaction processes between pro-reform party, the adepts of which are deriving on the position of slow but steady changes under the direct control of the executive power branch, and party opposed to the reform, the adherents of which are putting emphasis on weakness, halfness, carelessness and even harmfulness of these reforms. The main task of examination is to find out how aforementioned parties use media-platforms to persuade their opponents in conditions of authoritarian regime and how they use ‘Devil-Angel shift’ narrative strategy in such convictions.