How Policy Actors Engage in Argumentative Coupling: Evidence from Austria and the Netherlands During the COVID-19 Crisis

According to the Multiple Streams Framework, strong arguments are necessary (but not sufficient) to successfully couple the streams and effect policy change. Since policy entrepreneurs and their arguments can exert such influence over policy outcomes, it is academically pertinent to examine them. The COVID-19 crisis provides a helpful context to study argumentative coupling, as the rapidly changing evidence base motivated constant reevaluations of problems, policies, and political conditions. We look at expert arguments in Austria and the Netherlands. The pandemic responses of these countries differed significantly, despite their sociopolitical and epidemiological contexts being otherwise quite similar. We take a close look at the argumentative efforts of experts in comparison with other policy actors. We are especially interested in the reach of expert advice in public discourse and ultimately in policymaking. We leverage the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) to look at experts through the lens of policy entrepreneurship and understand how arguments prosper in crowded policy discourse under crisis conditions. After collecting qualitative data from a systematic media analysis, we use Discourse Network Analysis to understand how elements of the streams are coupled and by whom. This study also helps operationalise the Multiple Streams Framework further, specifically the coupling process. We also rely on a qualitative content analysis of media data, official government and expert documents, as well as elite interviews conducted in the two countries. While the analysis is still ongoing, we expect our findings to be available by the time of the ECPR general conference in September 2026.