ABSTRACT
In Brazil, the reality of COVID-19 was constructed in a diverse and multi-perspective way. Data, scientific principles, individual and collective experiences sought to forge ‘the truth’ about COVID-19. In the Brazilian Parliament, the legislative proposals to combat COVID-19 were directed by the External Commission to Combat COVID-19. Thus, this article aims to analyze the narrative arena that made up the political reality of COVID-19, in that commission, identifying the conditions that made ideas and arguments become political deliberations. Empirically outlined by the Narrative Policy Framework, we adopted as a unit of analysis the discourses and plots that composed the construction of a ‘certainty’ in the face of the risk and lethality of COVID-19. The architecture of COVID-19 revealed political ascents and maneuvers that transformed the Commission into a platform for exposing realities, based on particular scenarios and expectations. A narrative engineering that resulted in an increase in the opacity of the procedures to face the pandemic and embarrassment of the lines of responsibility. Thus, the narrative disputes involved in the definition of COVID-19, in the parliamentary sphere, indicated that the stabilization of its statute was fostered by a dialectical relationship between a certain set of ideas and their modeling of reality.
KEYWORDS
COVID-19; Policy making; Health policy; Legislative