Narratives in an Authoritarian Environment: Narrative Strategies, Plots, and Characters in Moscow’s Public Transport Reforms Debate

European Policy Analysis. 2021. Vol. 7. No. 2. P. 433–450.

Uldanov A., Gabriichuk T., Karateev D., Makhmutova M.

This article draws on the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to analyze Moscow’s public transport debate. Despite a proliferation of the NPF applications in recent years, applications to authoritarian institutional settings remain rare. We seek to fill this gap by examining the question of what policy narratives and narrative strategies are used by the actors, to advocate their vision of public transport development in Moscow. To this end, this research tests NPF meso-level hypotheses on narrative strategies in the context of Russia’s electoral authoritarian regime. Results show the difference between the use of narrative elements and strategies by the two opposing coalitions. While the governmental coalition uses an “angel shift” strategy and contains the scope of conflict to legitimize policy change, the opposing coalition focuses on a “devil shift” strategy and expands the scope of conflict to mobilize against the implementation of reforms, constructed as incomplete, and even harmful.

Keywords: Москва, общественный транспорт, public transport, политические дебаты, политика и общество, public policy reforms, policy debates, нарративы, narrative policy framework

Publication based on the results of: Narratives for or against change: A Narratives Policy Framework perspective on policy debates in Moscow (2021)