Political Narratology. How Stories Shape Power and Compliance

People are rarely prepared to die for a formula, to endure hardship for an abstraction, or to make sacrifices for a schematic. Ideology only begins to work when it is embedded within a story that has a past, a present, an enemy, a goal, and a path. Without a narrative, an ideology remains a book on a shelf. With a narrative, it becomes a destiny.

Narrative: The World We Live Inside

A narrative is neither a set of ideas nor a plan of action. A narrative is a picture of the world in which the programme seems necessary, the ideology appears natural, sacrifices are justified, and doubts are dangerous.

It answers not the question ‘what?’ or ‘why?’ but a deeper one: ‘What is actually happening, and what is my place in it?’

A narrative does not prove. It explains. It does not convince logically. It makes reality recognisable.

Why Is a Slogan Not a Narrative?

It often seems that a narrative is just a catchy slogan. This is a mistake. A slogan is a compressed fragment of a narrative, not the narrative itself. It only works because a story already exists, roles are already defined, and the context is already understood.

Without its narrative, a slogan appears hollow, irritating, and untrustworthy. The phrase ‘we will reclaim the country’ means nothing unless it has already been explained who took it, when, why, and who exactly it must be reclaimed for.

Why Do People Think They Believe in Ideas?

Most people sincerely believe they support a particular political position because of its ideas. In reality, more often than not, they are supporting a story in which they appear to be good people, their fears are explained, their anger is legitimised, and their hope is given form. The ideas come later, as justification.

A person first feels and then explains to themselves why it is rational. The narrative makes this explanation possible.

How Does a Narrative Make Ideology Seem ‘Natural’?

The most dangerous form of ideology is the one that is not called ideology. When values are presented not as a choice, but as common sense, as self-evident, as the only possible view.

This is exactly how a narrative works. It does not say: ‘Here is our ideology.’ It says: ‘This is simply how the world works.’ A narrative does not need to be fully articulated. More often, it exists as a background, as an implicit structure of meaning within which individual events become understandable and significant.

This is why a narrative is invisible, difficult to challenge, and emotionally protected.

Arguing with an ideology is a debate about values. Arguing with a narrative is a debate with the very reality a person lives in.

Why Do Programmes Change, but Narratives Do Not?

Political history is full of sharp reversals: broken promises, changes of course, contradictory and unexpected decisions. Yet a narrative can endure for decades.

This is because a programme is a tool, an ideology is a language, but a narrative is an identity.

A government can change its measures, but if it preserves the story, people continue to believe. When the narrative collapses, no programme can save it.

The Dangerous Illusion of Rational Choice

Modern people like to think of themselves as rational voters. They read figures, analyses, and comparisons. But at the decisive moment, they do not vote for a programme, or even for an ideology. They vote for a story in which it is clear to them who they are and what they stand for.

In a well-known case study set during a recessionary period, companies like those in the Fortune 500 tried to convince their employees and potential customers that they sincerely cared for their well-being, even in hard times. Contrary to traditional business practice, amid austerity elsewhere, these companies were presented as avoiding layoffs. This is considered a wise strategy; when the economy recovers, such companies are better positioned to accelerate growth and capture market share.

The only problem with this strategy was that most employees did not believe their claims. Too many people had been laid off too many times at other companies to think the same wasn’t inevitable at theirs.

Researchers Martin and Powers wanted to find out which strategy would best overcome this wave of scepticism. They compared four approaches. One group was told a simple story illustrating the company’s commitment. A second was given statistics supporting the claim. A third received both the statistics and the story. A fourth heard a formal policy statement from a senior executive.

You have likely guessed which method worked best? Most people, when presented with this research, tend to choose the third option, the story backed by data. But they would be wrong.

The simple story was the most persuasive. Though it defies the rational mind, it turns out that even numbers can get in the way of people adopting new behaviours or beliefs. The best stories are those that bypass the brain’s requirement to store facts separately from a person’s opinions.

This is not a weakness. It is human nature. The danger begins when a person refuses to acknowledge it.

Why Is It Important to Distinguish These Levels?

Distinguishing between narrative, ideology, and programme is not an academic exercise. It is a survival skill in the political space.

He who argues with a programme while remaining inside someone else’s narrative will lose. He who criticises an ideology without touching the story will not be heard. And he who accepts a narrative without realising it loses his freedom of interpretation.

Political narratology begins with a simple, yet difficult step: to see the story before you agree or object.

If a narrative is not a programme or an ideology, a new question arises: ‘Where, exactly, does the political struggle unfold?’ Not in parliament, not in laws, and not even in the media. It unfolds in the space of competing stories.

And it is to this space we now turn.

Chapter 3. Politics as a Competition of Stories

The specific political distinction… is that between friend and enemy.

Carl Schmitt

Why Is There Never Just One Story in Politics?

One of the most persistent illusions is the notion of politics as a debate of ideas. It seems as if different forces propose different programmes, and society chooses the most reasonable one. In reality, this is never the case. Ideas rarely clash in politics. Narratives do.

Each side offers not just a position, but an explanation of reality: what is happening, why now, who is to blame, who we are, what has been done to us, or what we must do to reclaim what was lost or protect what is fragile.

Therefore, the political arena is not a marketplace of arguments. Politics is a marketplace of meanings, where the victor is not the most accurate story but the most lived one.

What Does ‘Competition Of Narratives’ Mean?

The competition of narratives is a struggle for the right to name what is happening, to define the frame of meaning.

The questions sound simple, yet they determine everything else: Is this a crisis or an opportunity? A mistake or a betrayal? A threat or an invention? A defeat or a temporary sacrifice? Stability or stagnation? Reform or destruction?

A narrative is what an event becomes in people’s minds.

Why Does Not Truth Guarantee Victory?

In theory, it seems the true story should win. In practice, the story that wins is the one that better performs a psychological function.

A story wins if it is simple, repeatable, emotionally charged, reduces anxiety, or gives it direction. It wins when it offers clear roles, provides a sense of belonging, and justifies past decisions.

Truth can be complex, contradictory, and inconvenient. A story, however, must be livable.

A person chooses what they can live with.

The Field of Narrative Struggle

The political field is always populated by several competing stories, even if one appears to dominate outwardly. Typically, these are stories of different scales and levels: the official narrative of the authorities, the alternative narrative of the opposition, local stories of particular groups, traumatic narratives of the past, hidden or suppressed plots, and accompanying ironic or cynical versions of events.

These do not always exist in direct conflict and often run parallel, hardly touching. But in moments of crisis, they collide head-on.

It is during a crisis that you can see which story people have truly internalised.

How Does One Narrative Displace Another?

Stories rarely destroy each other logically. They displace one another. A story stops working when it no longer explains a person’s experience. When words no longer match lived reality, when promises find no confirmation in fact, and when repetition ceases to soothe.

At that moment, a vacuum arises. And it is instantly filled by another story, often simpler, more radical or cruder, but emotionally precise.

Political upheavals do not begin with actions but with a replacement of explanations.

Why Is the Past a Constant Battleground?

In the competition of stories, the past plays a special role. Not as a set of facts, but as a plot. The past can be told as glory or as trauma, as proof of greatness or as a series of humiliations, as a source of pride or as an unpaid debt.

Control over the past is control over possible futures. Because it is the past that answers the question: who are we, and what are we ‘owed’?

This is why history in politics is never neutral; it is always an instrument of the present.

Why Is Compromise Between Narratives Almost Impossible?

You can negotiate with ideas. You can bargain over programmes. With stories – almost never.

Because a narrative is not an opinion; it is an identity. To accept another’s story is to admit you have been living in a false one. And that is psychologically far too costly.

This is precisely why political conflicts so often appear irrational. People are not arguing about measures, but about the right to reality.

The Triumph of a Narrative as a Phase of Acceptance

When one narrative wins, it ceases to look like a story. It begins to seem like ‘simply reality’. Its language becomes natural, its assumptions self-evident, its questions the only possible ones.

At this moment, alternative stories begin to look naïve, dangerous, radical, inappropriate, and untimely.

This is how true victory works in politics. Not through compromise or universal agreement, but when disagreement becomes marginal.

Why Does the Competition of Stories Never End?

You can suppress one story, displace another, and silence a third. But you cannot destroy the competition itself. Because reality is always more complex than any telling of it.

Any dominant story accumulates tension over time. It simplifies, smoothes over, omits, and then cracks appear. In these cracks, new plots begin to sprout.

Politics is not a path to a final truth. It is the endless rewriting of explanations.

Why Understand This?

Understanding politics as a competition of stories changes your perspective, your algorithm of observation. You stop asking, ‘Who is right?’ and start asking, ‘Which story is working right now – and why?’

You see not only the words but also the roles they offer you. Not only the facts, but the plot they are inserted into.

This does not make a person cynical; it makes them attentive. Because in a world where stories, not ideas, are victorious, the most dangerous position is to believe that stories do not matter.

It is from here that we approach the next question: ‘Why do even the most accurate facts so often lose to a well-told plot?’

Chapter 4. Why Facts Lose to Narratives

Confidence is a feeling, not a sign of accuracy.

Daniel Kahneman

The Illusion of Fact-Based Politics

Modern people like to think of themselves as rational. We believe we make political decisions based on data, numbers, statistics, expertise, and evidence. It seems that if you show the ‘real facts’, the false story will collapse on its own. But this almost never, or truly never, happens.

Facts can be accurate, sources reliable, and arguments flawless. And still, they lose because facts by themselves do not live in the human mind.

A Fact Without a Story is Mute

A fact is an isolated event; a story is a connection. A fact says, ‘This happened.’ A narrative explains: ‘This happened because… and it means…’ Without a story, a fact doesn’t know what it relates to, what follows from it, who it concerns, whether it requires action, or if it is a threat or the norm.

Until a fact is embedded in a story, it remains noise. This is precisely why in politics, it’s not about refuting facts but about rewriting the stories in which those facts live.

How the Brain Chooses Between a Fact and a Story

The human brain did not evolve to analyse mathematical tables or draw geometric figures. It evolved to survive in an uncertain environment. A story provides what facts cannot: causality, sequence, predictability, emotional orientation, a sense of control, and anxiety reduction.

Facts require effort – a story saves energy. A fact forces one to think – a story allows one to feel that they already understand.

Under conditions of overload, fear, and uncertainty, a person almost always chooses coherence over accuracy.

The Emotional Architecture of Meaning

A political narrative is always built around emotions. Fear explains necessity, anger provides direction, pride creates identity, resentment justifies radicalism, and hope maintains loyalty.

Facts do not carry emotions in themselves. They must be ‘sanctified’ with meaning. Therefore, the same statistic can evoke anxiety or calm, rage or indifference, mobilisation or apathy.

The deciding factor is not the number, but the story into which it is embedded.

Why Refutation Almost Never Works

There is a naive belief: if you expose a lie, it will disappear. But political narratives are not destroyed by refutations because they are sustained not by their ‘truthfulness’ but by the function they perform.

If a story provides a sense of belonging, justifies pain, explains failures, preserves dignity, and reduces anxiety, then a fact that destroys it is perceived not as information but as a threat.

At this moment, defence mechanisms activate: the fact is declared false, the source hostile, the critic a traitor, doubt a weakness. The story protects itself.

When Facts Start to Work

Facts begin to matter not when they are accurate, but when they coincide with experience. If a person’s experience confirms a fact, it is easily accepted. If experience contradicts it, the fact is discarded.

This is why political narratives so often appeal to ‘life experience’, ‘ordinary people’, and ‘what is visible to the naked eye’.

A story that aligns with feeling is always stronger than a story confirmed by experts.

Information vs. Identity

The biggest mistake is to think that a political dispute is about data. In reality, it is a dispute about identity.

To accept a fact is to admit: I was wrong, I was deceived, my group is not right, my choice was incorrect.

This is psychologically painful and sometimes traumatic. Therefore, a person defends not a position, but themselves. Facts that threaten identity provoke resistance regardless of their quality or correspondence to reality.

Media and the Illusion of Being Informed

Modern people receive more information than ever before. But this does not make them more resistant to narratives. Quite the opposite. The increasing information flow destroys the ability to build one’s own stories, and a person begins to borrow ready-made ones.

Media rarely supply facts in their pure form; they convey frames, intonations, accents, repetitions, emotional markers.

This creates the feeling of ‘I know everything’, even though it is merely the reproduction of someone else’s plot.

Why The Truth Will Prevail’ is a Dangerous Myth

The belief in the automatic victory of truth absolves one of responsibility for form. It allows one not to think about language, structure, or how exactly what is happening is explained.

But truth without form does not prevail. It dissolves. A story without facts is dangerous; facts without a story are helpless.

Politics exists in the tension between them. And most often, the side that better manages meaning wins, not the one that provides information more accurately.

What Understanding This Mechanism Provides

Realising why facts lose to stories does not mean abandoning facts. It means abandoning naivety. You begin to see why some data are picked up and others ignored, why exposures don’t work, and why people cling to obviously weak explanations.

And most importantly, you begin to notice which stories serve your own beliefs. Because the most dangerous narrative is the one that seems like ‘just reality’.

From this understanding, we move on to the question of how exactly the main character of political history is created: the collective ‘we’.

Chapter 5. The Collective ‘We’ as the Main Character

A nation is an imagined political community.

Benedict Anderson

Why Politics Almost Never Says ‘You’

Politics almost never addresses a person directly. It rarely says ‘you’ and almost never ‘I’. Its basic form of address is ‘we’.

‘We are the people’, ‘we are the country’, ‘we are the majority’, ‘we are the heirs’, ‘we are in danger’, ‘we will win’. This is not a stylistic device nor a collective politeness, but a fundamental mechanism of political narrative.

Politics requires a character that is larger than any individual, spans generations, and can demand sacrifices without direct violence. This character becomes the collective ‘we’.

It is ‘we’ who act, err, suffer, endure, wage war, wait, justify, and forgive. It is ‘we’ who become the bearer of historical meaning.

We’ is Not Discovered – It is Constructed

The collective ‘we’ does not exist as a natural fact. It cannot be discovered, measured, or empirically recorded. It is created through language, symbols, rituals, repetition, emotional synchronisation, shared fear, and a shared promise.

Before a common narrative appears, there are simply a multitude of people with different interests, fears, views, and biographies. After its emergence, a subject appears that speaks on behalf of everyone, demands loyalty, defines the boundaries of acceptability, and punishes deviation.

This is neither a conspiracy theory nor manipulation in a narrow sense. It is a way to make society governable and predictable.

Imagined Does Not Mean Fictitious

The word ‘imagined’ is often perceived as a synonym for ‘unreal’. This is a mistake. Money is imagined, borders are imagined, laws are imagined. Yet they structure the lives of millions.

The collective ‘we’ operates on the same logic. It does not have a biological body, but it possesses psychological reality. People are willing to die in its name, endure for it, stay silent for it.

The imagined is a source of power.

The Belonging Effect as an Emotional Technology

Belonging is not proven – it is experienced. A person does not analyse ‘we’ because they are inside it.

The ‘we’ effect is formed through repeated formulas, recognisable symbols, collective rituals, images of the past, and projections of the future. At some point, a person ceases to distinguish where their own position ends and the position of the ‘collective’ begins.

This is precisely why belonging is felt physically – in a crowd, at a rally, in front of a screen, during the national anthem, at a moment of threat.

Why We’ is Stronger Than Individual Thinking

The individual ‘I’ doubts. The collective ‘we’ is certain. ‘I’ can be wrong. ‘We’ is almost always right. ‘I’ is afraid. ‘We’ provides courage.

The key is that ‘we’ removes a portion of responsibility. The decision is made not by a person, but by ‘history’, ‘the people’, ‘the era’, or ‘circumstances’. This provides psychological relief and a sense of justification.

This is where the collective ‘we’ becomes particularly attractive.

The Dissolution of Personal Doubt

When a person begins to think in terms of ‘we’, they gradually lose the habit of asking questions. Formulas like ‘we know’, ‘we understand’, and ‘we must’ displace personal doubt.

Disagreement begins to be perceived not as a position, but as a threat to integrity. Internal self-censorship arises: it is better to stay silent than to be excluded, better to agree than to be left alone.

A political narrative wins not when it convinces, but when alternative thought becomes psychologically dangerous.

We’ as a Moral Screen

The collective ‘we’ possesses a special property – it blurs personal responsibility. What a person would not dare to do in their own name, they easily justify in the name of the group.

Violence turns into defence, lies into necessity, suppression into care, silence into maturity. ‘We’ becomes a moral screen behind which individual ethics disappear.

This does not make people evil; it turns them into functions of history.

The Boundaries of ‘We’ as the Foundation of Identity

Any ‘we’ exists only if there is a boundary. If there is ‘we’, then there is ‘not us’. If there are ‘our own’, then there are ‘outsiders’. The stronger the narrative, the more sharply defined these boundaries are.

Political identity is rarely built on positive characteristics. More often – on negation: we are not them, we are not like that, we will not allow it, we will not forget.

It is precisely through the exclusion of ‘outsiders’ that the collective ‘we’ feels its own density.

Why We’ Requires Constant Reproduction

The collective ‘we’ is unstable. It must be constantly maintained – through holidays, crises, threats, mobilisation, symbolic gestures, repetition of history.

When the narrative weakens, the ‘we’ begins to disintegrate into a multitude of ‘I’s. This is the moment that power fears most – the moment of silence, in which the common explanation of events disappears.

When We’ Becomes a Trap

The problem is not belonging as such – a person needs community. Danger arises when ‘we’ do not allow distance, when doubt is declared a betrayal, when exit from the narrative becomes impossible.

At this moment, the collective ‘we’ ceases to be a source of power and turns into a mechanism of compliance.

Why It is Important to See the Construction of We

Understanding how the collective ‘we’ is created does not isolate a person. It restores their choice. One can belong without dissolving, participate without abandoning thought, say ‘we’ while understanding who is forming it and for what purpose.

Political narratology begins precisely here – with discerning the boundary between the story and oneself. Because the most dangerous moment is the moment you cease to understand where the narrative ends and your self begins.

Chapter 6. Who Is Included and Who Is Excluded

Exclusion is the foundation of the political order.

Giorgio Agamben

Every We’ Begins with a Boundary