Framing Covid-19: crises narratives and Europeanization in French, German and Swedish public discourse

The paper analyzes the construction of a shared narrative of the crises entailed from the Covid-19 pandemic among the European elite through a computer-assisted analysis of official communication of heads of government as well as health and economy ministers of France, Germany and Sweden between January and December 2020 (n = 2,000 ca.). The cases vary according to the strategies used to tackle the pandemic (voluntary vs. binding restrictive measures), political systems (centralized vs. decentralized) and consensual vs conflictual politics. Drawing on Political Science literature on crisis framing and Europeanization, we analyze textual data to investigate the process through which leaders’ discourses converge to justify (or legitimate) shifting competences from the national to EU-level. Results contribute to a better understanding of how crises may contribute to cooperation among Member States, and how public discourse seeks to legitimate institutional change at the EU level.