by Sonja Blum and Johanna Kuhlmann
In public policy, target group constructions are crucial. Groups are granted additional rights, while rights from other groups are withdrawn, certain groups of people or other entities are regulated, while burdens elsewhere are lifted. As Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram’s work (1993) told us, such decisions are related to target groups’ power position, but also to their positive or negative construction.
But how do these social constructions work, and based on which criteria are target groups of public policy perceived as deserving or undeserving? These exact criteria guiding social constructions of groups have remained rather elusive in extant public policy research.
In a new article that you can read here in full, we argue that the so-called CARIN criteria developed in the welfare deservingness literature provide a clear analytical frame for understanding positive and negative target group constructions across public policies. As van Oorschot (2000) established in his seminal Policy & Politics article, and since then confirmed in a flourishing research line, it is five criteria that guide perceptions of deservingness vs. undeservingness. These five criteria are: control, attitude, reciprocity, identity, and need. To date, this CARIN welfare deservingness literature has remained largely separate from work on Schneider and Ingram’s four types of target populations (advantaged, contender groups, dependants, and deviants).
In our article, we therefore integrate the CARIN criteria with the Schneider/Ingram typology of deservingness. This makes several contributions. Conceptually, it enriches the notion of deservingness within public policy research, and demonstrates the applicability of the CARIN criteria across different policy types. In other words, the five CARIN criteria do not only guide positive and negative target group constructions in redistributive welfare policies, but also, for example, provide guidance in issues of regulation.
Empirically, we present a respective case study on regulatory policies, and investigate target group constructions in Germany’s containment and vaccination policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methodologically, thereby the CARIN criteria – which have to date been used in public opinion research (mainly through surveys) – are harnessed for meso-level policy research. In the online appendix to our article, a codebook is provided which may be used for qualitative content analysis of target group constructions, e.g. within the Social Construction Framework, or other policy process theories that highlight social constructions, such as the Narrative Policy Framework (Jones et al., 2023).
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You can read the original research in Policy & Politics at
Blum, S., and Kuhlmann, J. (2025). What defines deservingness? Specifying the criteria for target groups constructions in public policy. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2025), available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000059>
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