Nothing special⋯ just a crisis: Framing social policies in Latvia 2008-2010

Abstract

This article addresses the way in which Latvian political actors communicated the gap between popular support for the welfare state and austerity measures aimed at dismantling it. I investigate the case of the Latvian economic crisis of 2008-2010. To this end, I utilise the typology developed by Paul Hart and Karen Tindall. Originally, this typology had been developed to analyse different approaches to the framing of economic crises by political elites in several Western countries. Initially, the study intended to include post-socialist countries, severely hit by the 2008 Economic crisis, however this original aim was not realised. In order to fill this gap, this paper focuses on the Baltic states, which suffered economic crisis and extensive transformation of their welfare systems. The typology distinguishes between three framing types: 'threat', 'opportunity' and 'business-as-usual', the first two of which are ideologically antagonistic. Analysing 250 news articles and a number of political documents that trace the political communication of Latvian prime ministers, welfare Ministers and ruling coalition parties, this paper provides evidence that 'framing' the crisis as a threat to the public good was the most common way of rationalising the need for austerity measures following the economic downturn. At the same time, the crisis as an opportunity frame has been used since the end of the economic crisis in Latvia. The latter was the outcome of successful electoral results of the ruling party 'Unity', the driving force of the First Dombrovskis government. Since the 2010 general elections in Latvia, both Dombrovskis himself and other politicians and officials loyal to the government have used the frame 'crisis-as-an-opportunity', continuing the dismantlement of the welfare state even after the end of the economic crisis.