These narratives typically undergo significant changes only in times of crises, when a confluence of circumstances necessitates a shift in the political discourse or its reformulation. Political regimes, as a rule, must furnish overarching narratives to justify their actions. The exigencies of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war further emphasize the necessity of employing a narrative approach in policy analysis. Consequently, these disclosed and available narratives serve as the gateway to comprehending the regime’s overarching policy orientations and their subsequent transformations. In this context, the narrative approach in public policy demonstrates its primary advantage: it transcends these objective challenges by focusing on the regime’s self-produced and publicly disseminated narratives.

These systemic challenges are not unique to Egypt but extend to numerous authoritarian regimes in the Arab region and an expanding number of countries in the global south. Furthermore, policy-making processes are veiled in secrecy and opaqueness, rendering policy support, networks, and alliances inaccessible to researchers. Particularly noteworthy is the narrative analysis of policymaking, considering the limited access to reliable data and statistics regarding the Egyptian regime’s procedures and policies exacerbated by escalating security restrictions and increasing constraints on academic freedom. The narrative approach offers untapped spaces for research and understanding that have previously been overlooked. By concentrating on the Egyptian context and comparing the regime’s narrative during the COVID-19 pandemic with its narrative on the Russia-Ukraine war, new avenues emerge for comprehending the formulation of Egyptian public policies. This fundamental premise underlies the Narrative Policy Framework, which aims to enhance comprehension of the relationship between narrative and public policy. The Egyptian regime strategically employs narrative to justify its public policies, recognizing the equal significance of narrative and the decisions themselves.

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