Government communication for unpopular policy

As of the publication of this doctoral thesis, Europe is grappling with its most significant conflict since World War II due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Populism has surged unexpectedly in Europe, Latin and North America, while authoritarianism has made significant inroads in the global south. Simultaneously, welfare systems are teetering on the brink of collapse. The aging population and the sustainability of public services are under grave threat. In essence, the not-so-long-ago universally accepted parameters of social life are being questioned. While the remedies for this situation lie beyond the scope of this research, many experts argue that the necessary interventions are likely to be unpopular. Measures such as fiscal austerity, public spending cuts, tax increases, and increased individual contributions to pension savings are proposed by policymakers. However, proposing these reforms can be politically challenging, as they may risk losing voter support. Moreover, as highlighted in the 2021 OECD Report on Public Communication, governments and civil servants are ill-equipped to effectively communicate and engage with citizens. In this grim scenario, governments are left with limited alternatives: adopting an authoritarian approach to enforce necessary reforms or ignoring these reforms and shifting the burden to future generations. In both cases, the stability of democracy and underlying institutional systems is at stake. This leads to our central research question: Is there a way to persuade citizens to embrace difficult and painful policy reforms? To address this question, we delve into a myriad of communication strategies spanning philosophy, sociology, economics, and social psychology. We propose an analytical model to evaluate the persuasive potential of public and government communication and apply this model to analyze two cases of government communication for unpopular reforms: Mario Monti and Elsa Fornero in Italy (2011 - 2012) and Sebastián Piñera in Chile (2018 - 2019). While our proposed model is a work in progress, we hope it can serve as a resource for fellow researchers and provide communication practitioners with actionable tools to enhance their effectiveness in addressing the citizens they serve.