Piketty, Thunberg, or Marx? Shifting ideologies in the COVID-19 bailout conditionality debate

Are crises an opportunity to push for fundamental changes? Can the COVID-19 crisis help to promote an ideological shift towards a different type of capitalism? By conducting a quantitative content analysis of the international press on the COVID-19 bailout conditionality debate, this article documents the existence of three dominant narratives: the distributive justice, environmental justice, and Marxist-type anti-capitalistic narratives. Yet, only the distributive justice assumed greater prominence during the period of observation, signaling a small step towards an ideological shift in which the general public may become more open to scrutiny of companies’ dividend and bonus policies and more averse to acceptance of tax avoidance and the accumulation of excessive wealth by members of the corporate elite. The article concludes by recommending MNEs and their CEOs to be prepared for more distributive justice challenges in the future.