Telling Us Together: The Role of Policy Narratives in Depolarizing Public Policy Debates

This study aims to identify potentially depolarizing narrative elements in public policy debates. A growing body of research investigates polarization and its adverse consequences for democracies. There is some research indicating that narratives, as a fundamental way of human cognition, can shape polarization by interpreting policy issues in stories that reinforce ideological or group divides. While there also exist various mitigating or depolarizing approaches, research on their design and actual effectiveness is scant. This study aims to contribute to the closure of this gap by applying the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to investigate how so-called «counter speech» approaches manifest in narratives. Identified but widely unexplored counter speech mechanisms that may mitigate polarized debates are positivism, facts, humor, empathy and solidarity, name polarizing content (e.g., hate speech), warn about consequences, moralize, and expose contradictions in statements. Employing the NPF, this study’s methodological approach is two-fold: First, it aims to examine three polarized policy debates in Switzerland for the presence of depolarizing narrative elements. The debates are on the Climate Protection Act, the social policy design and labor market integration of persons with protection status S (Ukrainian refugees), and the premium relief and cost containment initiatives in the Swiss healthcare system. Second, based on the findings, a survey experiment will be conducted to test potential effects of counter speech and depolarizing policy narratives, respectively. The main objective of this study is to identify certain 'depolarizing patterns' in public policy debates or to even contribute to the extension of the NPF by introducing specific depolarizing narrative elements.