Crisis-exploitation or fear-mongering? A research agenda for the comparative study of policy crises and illiberal policy frames
本文提出研究议程，系统分析非自由政策框架（IPFs），通过奥地利、德国、匈牙利和美国在移民与新冠疫情两个议题上的立法者言论，发现非自由框架的使用与政策危机指标（如寻求庇护者数量、新冠死亡人数）无关，表明这是一种持续的恐惧煽动策略而非危机利用。
The pervasive and growing illiberal movement is, perhaps, the greatest global challenge to liberal democracy today. Scholars argue that domestic and international crises have played an important role in perpetuating illiberalism among leaders and growing its support among their populace. In this paper, we set out a research agenda for the systematic study of illiberal policy frames (IPFs). In illustrating the potential of the concept and its operationalisation, we analyse how legislative politicians have used policy crises to communicate their policy ideas through IPFs. First, we define and measure illiberal frames in four countries (Austria, Germany, Hungary and the United States) for two policy issues (migration and COVID-19) using a novel IPF codebook and state-of-the-art large language models. Second, we assess the extent to which the use of these frames is sensitive to exogenous policy crises. Our findings suggest that the usage of illiberal political frames does not closely track the pertinent policy crisis metrics, such as the number of asylum seekers (for migration) or casualties (for COVID-19). Narratives show no relation to markers of the underlying policy crises, which points to a political strategy based on continued fear-mongering rather than crisis exploitation.