The Narrative Policy Framework in the context of the Covid19 pandemic: the “politics of resilience” in the European Union

A key assumption of the policy-making process is the acknowledgment that contemporary challenges – such as economic and financial crisis, climate change, and, more recently, pandemics - are too unpredictable and uncertain to be foreseen. Here, approaches based on “resilience” can intervene as mitigating factor in helping adaptation to these crisis. Within the Covid19 pandemic, the concept of resilience has represented a powerful political tool strategically used by policy actors to promote adaptation and flexibility. Resilience, either economic or referred to individual or collective wellbeing, has been one of the key words within the Covid19 pandemic. The European Commission has now included the word “resilience” among the priorities of its economic policies. Resilience is also part of the measures within the umbrella of the Recovery Fund, with Member States required to develop action plans - named “recovery and resilience plans” in which they need to indicate which actions, reforms and investments they will put in place to spur the post-pandemic recovery. This paper explores the development of the narrative of resilience by identifying key-resilience related topic at the level of the European Union. The analysis considers where resilience has been framed within the aim of privileging either measures aimed at supporting the economy of the internal market or at supporting collective health and social protection. In further contributing to the development of the NPF, the paper explores how the concept of resilience has been strategically constructed in achieving popular support, thus becoming the “lifeblood of politics” in the response to the pandemic (Shanahan, McBeth et al. 2011 : 374). To dissect the ways the EU engaged in the politics of resilience, the Narrative Policy Framework is employed on political speeches and official communications. Unfolding how the concept of resilience was strategically framed in achieving popular support, is also important in shedding light on how resilience was seen as necessary to overcome the pandemic crisis but on the perceptions of how it was linked to policy solutions greatly varied as well. References: Bovens, M. et al. (2008) 'The politics of policy evaluation', in Robert E Goodin et al. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 319–335. European Commission (2020). Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing a Recovery and Resilience Facility. COM/2020/408 final. Jones, M.D. and McBeth, M.K. (2010), ‘A Narrative Policy Framework: Clear Enough to Be Wrong?’ Policy Studies Journal, 38: 329-353. Patterson, M. and Monroe, K. R. (1998).’Narrative in Political Science’. Annual Review of Political Science. 1315– 331. Shanahan, E. A.; McBeth, M.K. and Hathaway P.L. (2011) ‘Narrative Policy Framework: The Influence of Media Policy Narratives on Public Opinion’. Politics & Policy, 39: 373-400 Shenhav, S. R. (2006). ‘Political narratives and political reality’. International Political Science Review. 27 (3), 245–262.