Christopher Smith Ochoa
In a strong contribution to our new themed section on Interpretive Process Tracing, this article examines how poverty became recognised as a legitimate policy issue in Germany, bringing interpretive process tracing into dialogue with policy feedback theory to explain how a political system that long denied poverty came to embed it within federal policy reporting.
Focusing on the long-term dynamics of policy change, Christopher Smith Ochoa addresses a central question in policy studies: how does a social condition come to be constructed, accepted, and institutionalised as a policy problem? The article speaks directly to debates on knowledge utilisation in policymaking while advancing interpretive process tracing as a method for analysing meaning-driven, historically extended policy processes.
The central argument is that poverty’s rise on the German policy agenda did not result from a single turning point. Instead, it emerged through a gradual, contested process in which policy effects and agential interventions became intertwined. Drawing primarily on seventeen qualitative interviews, the article reconstructs a five-decade trajectory in which civil society organisations, academics, and policymakers worked—often in tension—to redefine poverty as a legitimate object of policy.
A key contribution lies in integrating interpretive process tracing with policy feedback theory. While policy feedback research typically focuses on how policies shape behaviour and institutions, this article shows the importance of analysing how actors interpret and strategically rework these effects. Interpretive process tracing makes it possible to capture these dynamics by foregrounding meaning-making, contestation, and agency within evolving policy contexts.
Empirically, the analysis identifies seven key “instantiations” through which poverty became politically legible. These include early European anti-poverty programmes that challenged domestic assumptions, the mobilisation of civil society and welfare associations to produce “poverty knowledge”, and the eventual institutionalisation of the federal Poverty and Wealth Report. Across these moments, civil society actors played a central role in sustaining pressure and building epistemic legitimacy, often in the face of resistance.
The article also examines the more recent, contested inclusion of people with lived experience of poverty in reporting processes. Initiatives such as shadow reports and participatory workshops sought to expand whose knowledge counts in policymaking. While these developments mark an important shift, the analysis emphasises their partial and fragile character.
Across the case, three mechanisms—contestation, advocacy, and feedback—drive change. These mechanisms recur and interact over time, producing a cumulative, “snowballing” dynamic of policy development. This offers a nuanced account of how policy problems are constructed and institutionalised in practice.
The article concludes with a more critical reflection: the recognition of poverty as a policy issue has not translated into substantial reductions in poverty itself. This raises important questions about the limits of knowledge, participation, and institutionalisation in addressing structural inequality.
You can read the original research in Policy & Politics at
Smith Ochoa, C. (2026) How social reporting put poverty on the agenda in Germany: an interpretive process tracing analysis. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2026) https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2026D000000087
Table of contents for Themed Section – Advancing Interpretive Process Tracing in Policy Research
Interpretive Process Tracing in Policy Research (Introduction to the themed section)
by Hilde van Meegdenburg, Sandra Plümer and Johanna Kuhlmann
How social reporting put poverty on the agenda in Germany: an interpretive process tracing analysis
By Christopher Smith Ochoa
The Role of Causal Mechanisms in Policy Diffusion: Assisted Voluntary Return Policies in Germany
By Sybille Münch
Interpretive Process Tracing? How PT Can Become Amenable to Interpretive Research
by Hilde van Meegdenburg
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