Narrating Moscow’s housing ‘renovation’: beyond the frontstage discourses of the narrative policy framework

ABSTRACT

The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) has become a popular, positivist approach to studying how narratives affect the policy process over the past 10 years. In this paper, we critically evaluate its applicability in an authoritarian context. We employ a mixed-method approach to, first, present some of the narrative elements employed by principal actors in the policy debate according to the NPF, derived through quantitative content analysis, and second, to critically contrast these findings by drawing on qualitative data. The policy we examine is Moscow’s contentious Renovation program, which aims to demolish many of the city’s Soviet-era five story ‘Kruschovsky’ apartment blocks and resettle residents in new apartments. The quantitative content analysis is derived from several online government sources and that of the principal opponent of the Renovation program, an online group called ‘Moscovites Against Demolition’. The qualitative data are derived from a district in Southwest Moscow, where the first Kruschovsky apartments were developed and has locally seen vocal opposition to the Renovation program and other redevelopment projects. This study highlights the limitations of the NPF and argues that by examining the performative nature of policy narratives, we can gain greater insight into the political strategies and context that underwrite these narratives.

KEYWORDS:

• Russia
• civil society
• housing policy
• policy narratives
• narrative policy framework
• renovation program

Acknowledgments

The publication was prepared within the framework of the Academic Fund Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in 2020–2021 (grant no. 20-04-003) and by the Russian Academic Excellence Project “5-100.” We would like to thank Caroline Schlaufer, Artem Uldanov, and other project participants for their comments and contributions. The paper was presented at the ECPR General Conference in 2020 and the Interpretative Policy Analysis Conference in 2021. We would like to thank the organisers and participants for their questions and suggestions, and particularly Jonathan Pierce for his close reading of an earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. Levada-Center (2020, March 12). Protest potential, press release. https://www.levada.ru/2020/03/12/protestnyj-potentsial-11/. Accessed 18 June 2020.

2. Taken from fieldnotes 28 April, 2018.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Research University Higher School of Economics [grant no. 20-04- 003].