Pandemic narratives and policy responses: west European governments and COVID-19

ABSTRACT

Governments across western Europe have adopted significantly different policy responses to the existential challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. We propose that a key to understanding the differences in policy responses may lie in narratives. Focusing on fifteen countries in western Europe, as well as two contrasting case studies on Sweden and Greece, we investigate the relationship between the narratives that governments developed on the threats generated by COVID-19, and the (early) stringency of their respective policy responses that followed. Our analysis suggests that there is an inverse relationship between the emphasis on the economic cost of the pandemic and on framing the disease as affecting ‘only’ certain sub-groups severely in government narratives, and the tendency to introduce early and stringent restrictions.

KEYWORDS:

• Narratives
• COVID-19
• Western Europe

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 According to the classic definitions proposed by Knight (1921), a clear distinction should be drawn between uncertainty (which is unmeasurable) and risk (which can be estimated, hence reducing uncertainty). Arguably, by referring to ‘risk groups’ in their narratives, governments attempted to reduce uncertainty and help the public make sense of the threat.

2 This logic suggests ‘underreaction’ at a time when governments could – perhaps even should – have been erring on the side of overreaction (Maor, 2012). Indeed, according to the precautionary principle, prescribing the adoption of precautionary measures when scientific evidence about a health hazard is uncertain, the correct reaction is – by definition – an overreaction. Prospect theory would also suggest that when faced with huge potential losses, decision-makers are more likely to throw caution to the winds – in this case adopt corona restrictions of extreme stringency, with little regard to the immediate economic consequences. However, the confusion surrounding the disease meant that even in the face of all the evidence that was piling up from Italy, the nature of the threat was recognised only to different degrees and interpreted in different ways. Both overreaction and underreaction were thus equally plausible in this context, and depended on the emphases that were brought to bear in the respective narratives.

3 We included the UK as the country left the EU only on 31 January 2020.

4 We included the French president as elected head of state in a semi-presidential system.

5 Given that managing fears, anxieties, or complacency of electorates also constitutes a part of the policy response, narratives might be considered an end in themselves; for analytic purposes though, we retain the distinction between narratives and policy responses.

6 One way to assess the accuracy of official COVID-19-mortality data comparing them to excess mortality data.

7 Note, however, that there was no overwhelming consensus on priorities and coping strategies within the Swedish scientific community (see e.g., Söderberg-Nauclér, 2020).

8 ‘Othering’ the elderly in this sense was arguably used to play down the extent of the threat as well as to emphasise the need to engage in altruistic behaviour.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amrita Narlikar

Amrita Narlikar is President of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Professor of International Relations at Hamburg University, and Honorary Fellow of Darwin College at the University of Cambridge.

Cecilia Emma Sottilotta

Cecilia Emma Sottilotta is Assistant Professor of International Relations and Global Politics at the American University of Rome and Visiting Professor at the EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies Department of the College of Europe, Bruges.