A discourse network analysis on antimicrobial resistance in Switzerland and Germany, 1999-2019

Antimicrobial resistances have emerged as a pressing policy issue at the intersection of policy fields such as environmental policy, health policy, agricultural policy, and others (Vogeler et al. 2021) during the last 20 years. Whereas the first discussions and related problem definitions have been formulated at the international level by the European Union and the World Health Organization (Wernli et al. 2017), the issue has slowly also been taken up in domestic policy discourses. Furthermore, while the issue has been (and still is) discussed in mainly scientific terms, societal stakeholders and political parties have partly taken it up, too, not least driven by focusing events such as alimentary scandals or outbreak of diseases. The development of the issue of antimicrobial resistance is thus a story of the translation of an issue dealt with at the international level into national policy discourses, and the translation of an issue dealt with at the scientific level into discourses of societal actors. Both developments interact and are further influenced by focusing events, on the one hand, and cross-sectoral dynamics of blame attribution, on the other. We analyze the public discourse in two countries, Germany and Switzerland, over two decades, in order to disentangle the dynamics related to these different factors influencing the development of the discourse. Our analysis relies on 1,149 media articles in two Swiss and two German newspapers and applies Discourse Network Analysis to conceptualize the public discourse as a network of actors related to specific issues. First, we ask the more specific question of whether and how the discourse developed from a pluri-sectoral, fragmented discourse about AMR towards a more integrated AMR discussion based on the one-health approach (Hannah and Baekkeskov 2020). Second, we ask whether the contribution of two “outside” actors to the national political system in a narrow sense – the EU (being “outside” given that it’s supra-national) and science (being “outside” given that its main role is not political) – have contributed to this discourse and potentially made it more integrated or “europeanized” (Refle, Fischer, and Maggetti 2022), given their more holistic views on the issue. Third, we ask how specific dynamics of blame-attribution (for creating the problem) and solution-responsibility (for creating a solution) develop over time, and how different types of actor dynamics and discourse contribute to such a relation between blame and solution. Hannah, A. and Baekkeskov, E. (2020) 'The promises and pitfalls of polysemic ideas: ‘One Health’ and antimicrobial resistance policy in Australia and the UK'. Policy Sciences 53(3):437-52. Refle, J.-E., Fischer, M., and Maggetti, M. (2022) 'Informal Europeanization Processes and Domestic Governance Networks'. European Policy Analysis 8(1). Vogeler, C.S., Hornung, J., Bandelow, N.C., and Möck, M. (2021) 'Antimicrobial Resistance Policies in European Countries – A Comparative Analysis of Policy Integration in the Water-food-health Nexus'. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning:1-12. Wernli, D., et al. (2017) 'Mapping Global Policy Discourse on Antimicrobial Resistance'. BMJ Global Health 2(2):e000378.