Learning to care? Retracing the evolution of the crisis-solidarity nexus in ECB speeches

The study explores the evolving concept of financial solidarity in the European Central Bank (ECB). Financial solidarity played a pivotal role in political discourses during two major crises of the past decade — the sovereign debt crisis (2010) and the COVID-19 pandemic (2020). Most importantly, the different policymaking strategies enacted during the crises suggest a shift in the underlying interpretation of the concept that calls for explanation. In our paper, we are going to investigate how policy failures, crisis legacies, and authority contestation contributed to a change of approach from the ECB. The research aims to analyse the ECB's discursive construction of financial solidarity through the lenses of adaptive learning, considering both endogenous (past policy experiences) and exogenous (political system responsiveness to society) processes of change. Using Structural and assisted Topic Modelling (STM and KeyATM) on the ECB corpus of speeches, the study traces semantic shifts towards solidarity. In addition, process tracing and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) are employed to link discourse practices to policy outcomes, and analyse relevant cases of meanings’ construction and/or contestation. The mixed methodology enhances the understanding of institutional change through learning, addressing the inherent shortcomings of each, single approach.