The recent turn to market activism is transforming the politics around the state and capitalism, while significantly restructuring markets. We focus on one important but understudied element in this development: the securitization of market competition in the European Union. We argue that European political actors are strategically using specific narratives to construct competition policies in a new way, one that implicates the geopolitical standing of the EU and its national security. This contrasts with the longstanding view of EU competition policy as existing in a separate sphere, disembedded from politics, where market efficiency is paramount. To empirically capture this change, we undertake a systematic analysis of DG Competition Annual Reports, using a language-analysis schema over the decade from 2013 to 2023. Our findings demonstrate that this securitization strategy has been consistently increasing over time in the EU, evidenced in the rhetorical use of crises, the linking of markets to a larger set of issues and policy goals, the invocation of geopolitical pressures, and the framing of a need for the consolidation of EU power. We note, however, that this policy turn towards securitization of economic policy brings substantial political tensions given the EU’s limited democratic accountability.

Asylum seekers are often portrayed as “bogus refugees” who try to abuse a destination country’s generosity and protection. We scrutinise the use and effect of such a constructed abuse policy narrative in Swiss asylum referendums by examining the conveyance of this narrative by political elite actors (meso-level) and its effect on citizens’ opinion formation (micro-level). On the meso-level, our analysis shows that political organisations rely more strongly on the abuse policy narrative (1) if a referendum proposal contains more tightening as opposed to streamlining policies and (2) if their political ideology is to the right. While the first finding also applies at the micro-level, voters from both the right and the centre are likely to base their decision on the abuse policy narrative. The fact that this narrative is convincing for centrist voters is particularly important as they usually play a decisive role in the outcome of asylum referendums.

Public representations of long-term residential care (LTRC) facilities have received limited focus in Canada, although literature from other countries indicates that public perceptions of LTRC tend to be negative, particularly in contexts that prioritize aging and dying in place. Using Manitoba as the study context, we investigate a question of broad relevance to the Canadian perspective; specifically, what are current public perceptions of the role and function of long-term care in the context of a changing health care system? Through critical discourse analysis, we identify four overarching discourses dominating public perceptions of LTRC: the problem of public aging, LTRC as an imperfect solution to the problem, LTRC as ambiguous social spaces, and LTRC as a last resort option. Building on prior theoretical work, we suggest that public perceptions of LTRC are informed by neoliberal discourses that privilege individual responsibility and problematize public care.

In 1965 and 1966, the United States and Canada adopted single-payer models of government insurance for physician and hospital services – universal in Canada, but restricted to certain population groups in the US. At the time, the American and Canadian political economies of health care and landscapes of public opinion were remarkably similar, and the different policy designs must be understood as products of the distinctive macro-level politics of the day. Subsequently, however, the different scopes of single-payer coverage would drive the two systems in different directions. In Canada, the single-payer system became entrenched in popular support and in the nexus of interest it created between the medical profession and the state. In the US, Medicare became similarly entrenched in popular support, but did so as part of the larger multi-payer private insurance system. In the process universal single-payer coverage became politically iconic in Canada and taboo in the US.