This article draws on the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to analyze the recent debates over Moscow's public transport policy. Despite a proliferation of NPF implementations in recent years, applications in authoritarian institutional settings remain rare. We seek to fill this gap by examining how the actors combine narrative strategies, characters, and plots to advocate their vision of public transport development in Moscow. To this end, this study tests NPF meso-level hypotheses on narrative strategies and their connections with plots and characters used in the context of Russian electoral authoritarian regime. The results show that the NPF hypotheses are applicable for the analysis of policy debates in an authoritarian context. While the governmental coalition uses an angel shift strategy-focusing on heroes, beneficiaries, and stories of control-to contain the scope of conflict, the opposing coalition implies a devil shift strategy with a specific attention to villains, victims, and different plots to expand the scope of conflict.
Why does a regime that is predominantly characterised by conservative ideology introduce opioid substitution therapy (OST), a liberal policy? This article applies the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) to examine the introduction of OST in Belarus. Methodologically, the research draws on qualitative content analysis of drug policy documents and reports as well as on interviews. Results show how an increased HIV prevalence among injecting drug users opened a policy window in the problem stream. The increase in HIV cases could be used by a network of global and local policy entrepreneurs to frame OST as a public health policy instead of a drug policy measure. Findings suggest that, in nondemocratic regimes, global policy entrepreneurs can play a dominant role in introducing new policy ideas. However, the sustainability of the policy change remains questionable when acquiescence by key policymakers is lacking.
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