One discourse to rule them all? Narrating the agenda for labor market policies in France and Germany

Abstract

Despite different institutional and situational conditions, the recent French labor market reforms bear a strong resemblance to the labor market reforms in Germany in the early 2000s. Governments at both points in time turned away from the conservative welfare state model and failed to appropriately legitimize their reforms toward the public as well as their originally partly social-democratic electorate. Given the diverging conditions which are expected to lead to different strategies of legitimization, this contribution inquires after the narrative stories with which the corresponding acting government framed its reforms publicly. Surprisingly, despite the large differences that the two governments faced, the analysis shows that the respective narratives stories were not only similar but can be assigned to certain programmatic groups that used the narratives to push their own policy program and place themselves in power positions. In doing so, the contribution establishes a yet missing link between the recently established Programmatic Action Framework (PAF) and the concept of narrative stories and discourse in policy analysis, thereby adding to both research strands. This link lies in the observation that programmatic groups use narratives to strengthen in-group identification and thus improve their chances of success, which makes dominant narratives an important indicator of programmatic groups. However, when legitimizing reforms–even if these are transferred from other country experiences–it is imperatively important to embed the strategies of legitimization in the national context.