Articulating the alternative policy narratives: comparative analysis of two political arenas

It has been acknowledged that stories play an immense role in the public policy process. Some authors claim that stories are the "lifeblood of politics", stories and narratives are the tools for setting policy agendas, raising the saliency of an issue and formulating winning policies. However, articulating policy stories is not an entirely inclusive process for citizens even in well-developed democracies, let alone in hybrid regimes. On the other hand, democratic innovations, especially in the forms of deliberative mini-publics, have shown the potential of creating an inclusive decision-making process through citizens’ deliberation. In this research, I analyse the characteristics and forms of narratives about policies at the micro and meso levels of two political arenas (agorae narrans) within the environmental policy subsystem in Serbia. I examine an experimental ad hoc political arena, a deliberative mini-public in Valjevo, and an institutionalised ad hoc political arena, a public hearing in Belgrade. The subject of analysis will be narratives policy narratives, as they are defined in the theory of the narrative policy framework (NPF). The theoretical framework consists of the NPF and the theory of deliberative democracy. I am operationalising the research through the narrative policy index (NPI), which I construct following the procedures of the standard instrument for measuring the quality of deliberation, the discourse quality index (DQI). The focus is on the characteristics of policy narratives, the strategies used in both policy arenas, and the proposed solutions articulated within both arenas. The main question of this research is whether deliberation within the deliberative mini-public can lead to citizens articulating alternative narratives to the dominant one, articulated by the politicians of the ruling coalition, within the public hearing. The context of this research is within a hybrid regime, giving more importance to this question of articulating alternative policy narratives. Preliminary results of this research, which is part of a doctoral thesis research, will be presented.