Symbolic Repertoires in Politics and Policy

Political science has long privileged quantifiable factors and complex models, often sidelining the study of ideas and emotions. Recently, however, growing attention has been paid to how meaning-making, storytelling, and affective communication shape political choices, policymaking, and public perceptions. This Workshop contributes to this shift by focusing on symbolic repertoires — the stock of narratives, images, practices, and categories that political actors employ to define problems, justify decisions, mobilise support, and communicate policy choices. The Workshop aims to shed light on the diverse ways in which symbols operate in politics and policymaking. It brings together scholars working from different perspectives — those of policymakers, target groups, stakeholders, and interest groups — who share a commitment to analysing how symbols shape perceptions and cognitions, help define and legitimise policy, and influence reception and compliance. The Workshop welcomes papers that use qualitative and comparative methods, or multi-method approaches, to examine these dynamics across contexts. Its collaborative format will ensure active feedback and dialogue across career stages and geographical locations. The ultimate objective is to foster a rich understanding of symbolic politics and to publish selected contributions in a special issue of a leading political or policy studies journal.

Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso Books. Boussaguet, Laurie, Florence Faucher, et Christian Freudlsperger. 2023. « Performing Crisis Management: National Repertoires of Symbolic Action and Their Usage during the Covid-19 Pandemic in Europe ». Political Studies 71 (4): 1090‑1109. Boussaguet, Laurie, et Florence Faucher. 2024. Symbolic Policy. Elements in Public Policy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Polletta, Francesca. 2006. It was like a fever: Storytelling in protest and politics. University of Chicago Press. Simko, Christina. 2015. The Politics of Consolation: Memory and the Meaning of September 11. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tilly, Charles. 1995. « Contentious repertoires in Great Britain, 1758-1834 ». In Repertoires and Cycles of Collective Action, par Michael W. Traugott, 15‑42. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Trevisan, Filippo, Michael Vaughan & Ariadne Vromen. 2025. Story Tech: Power storytelling and social change advocacy. University of Michigan Press

1: How do policymakers create, extend and use repertoires of symbolic action?
2: Does the rise of AI and digital targeting change how the symbolic is used?
3: How do politicians and policymakers use citizens’ stories to construct repertoires of symbolic action?
4: How does the public respond and engage with the use of symbols?
5: How do politicians and policymakers select what symbols are the most likely to capture attention?

Title	Details
The missing puzzle piece: the symbolic dimension of policy narratives	View Paper Details
Performing Sovereignty Through Sport: The Kosovo National Team as a Symbolic Repertoire of Nationhood	View Paper Details
Repertoires of digital nationalism: Symbolic conflict and affective responses in Cambodian-Thai online encounters	View Paper Details
Narrating EU Policy Shift: MEPs Narratives and Discursive Repertoires in EU Media Policy Debates	View Paper Details
Images to celebrate, images to criticize: exploring institutional and dissenting iconographies of European integration	View Paper Details
When Recognition Backfires: The Effects of Place-Based Appeals on Attachment and Political Trust	View Paper Details
Symbols and Citizen Discourses of Region-Building in 'Low' Identity Regions	View Paper Details
Tokens of national redemption: The symbolic economy of Jewish ‘witness testimonies’ in contemporary Germany	View Paper Details
Who Remembers Best? Institutional Memory and Political Mobilization in France and the United States	View Paper Details
At risk and risky young people: symbolic repertoires in online safety policy in Australia and the UK	View Paper Details
Same Symbols, Different Systems: Political Communication and Regime Legitimation in Russia and Hungary	View Paper Details
Beyond the Secular–Muslim Divide: Gendered Symbolic Repertoires and Anti-LGBTI Politics in Turkey	View Paper Details
When Policies Speak: How language becomes an ideological cue in the Brussels-Capital region	View Paper Details
Contested Europeanness: EU accession and political polarisation in Serbia	View Paper Details
When Feminist Ideas Lose Power: Coalition Magnets and Policy Change in German Gender Governance (1998-2025)	View Paper Details
Foreign appeals: Symbolic uses of "the West" in Parliamentary Speeches	View Paper Details
Hunger, Faith, and Symbolic Governance: Evaluating Symbolic Repertoires among Food-Insecure Women in India and Albania	View Paper Details
Liminal Emotions and Visual Politics: Symbolic Repertoires Across Time	View Paper Details
Appealing to the ordinary citizen: symbolic repertoires of ordinariness in party communication	View Paper Details
Building one’s political capacity with symbols in the margins of the State: a symbolic analysis of the governance of rural shops in France	View Paper Details
From solidarity to control: Tracing the changing conceptualization of worker protection in Swedish labour market policy	View Paper Details