City Research Online

Abstract

Post-COVID economic recovery agendas emphasise health, sustainability, and resilience. However, how to make economies more health-promoting – and how the relationship between economy and health is best governed – is contestable and normative. This article offers an interpretive use of Discourse Network Analysis to explore the ideas underlying the EU’s economic recovery discourse and the place of health within it. It analyses how documents published in 2020 by various EU institutions talk about health and about economic recovery, shedding light on the relationship between ideas on these topics, and how they form a multifaceted discourse. We suggest that the discourse on economic recovery is underpinned by three ‘idea clusters’ that represent facets of the overarching discourse: ‘Economic and Monetary Union’, ‘Social Europe’, and ‘European Health Union’. We show how socioeconomic ideas, largely from the ‘Social Europe’ cluster, along with health security, are the main bridges that hold the discourse together by argumentatively connecting economic recovery and health. We also highlight that, except for the European Central Bank, idea clusters do not reflect specific institutions, but that all clusters feature in parts of institutions, underscoring that it is important not to treat institutions as monoliths, but to unpack the nuances present within them.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Copyright (c) 2025 Charlotte Godziewski, Tim Henrichsen. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs School of Policy & Global Affairs > Department of International Politics
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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