Resumen de Opposition parties in times of pandemics

Lydia Laflamme, Jeanne Milot-Poulin, Jeanne Desrosiers, Cedrik Verreault, Carolane Fillion, Nicolas Patenaude, Marc André Bodet

• The first political casualties of crises are often opposition parties. In such times,there is a tendency to rally around leadership and value collective solidarityabove all partisan considerations. We use data from parliamentary speeches,media interventions, and a series of interviews with key Quebec provincialparliamentarians to test whether and how the COVID-19 pandemic hasaffected the strategies of opposition critics in the context of a Westminstersystem. Focusing on the Quebec Legislative Assembly – but hoping to shedlight on other comparable contexts – we observe a shift from critical towardrather propositional interventions, especially during the first wave of thepandemic in the spring of 2020, while there does not seem to be adifferentiated strategy between the parliamentary and media interventions ofopposition critics. Finally, if the reduction in personal attacks we expected issupported by the analysis of media interventions, this pattern diverges inparliament.