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The 'Social Construction Framework' which addresses the relationship between policy design and the construction of target groups is one of the central approaches within the field of policy theories. Yet, despite its name, the approach builds on several naturalist premises, and its analytical components are informed by principles rooted in positivist methodologies. Against this background, this article conducts a thorough critique of the framework's constructivist shortcomings, and it develops a strictly constructivist and interpretive reading of its core arguments. The analytical value is substantiated by presenting original empirical research on the meaning of the 'middle class' in German welfare policy. We will show that, firstly, group construction is not only a matter of positive or negative evaluation, but more fundamentally an act of boundary-drawing, with differently constructed middle classes enabling different welfare policies. Secondly, we will show that target group constructions are always entangled with the construction of the group's outside, leading to the stabilisation and legitimisation of hierarchies between the middle class and 'the others' in society. Thirdly, we demonstrate that the power of a target group is also a matter of social construction, with the middle class obtaining its hegemonic position from an order of knowledge that equates the middle with 'the normal' and 'the common good'. Based on these insights, the article raises a more general plea against the translation of constructivism into a middle-range theory of the policy process and instead emphasises the ontological and epistemological distinctiveness of strict constructivism and interpretive methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When it comes to evaluating social and political developments, the category of the middle class takes a central position in public debates. The same holds true for welfare state research which assigns a vital role to the middle class, especially when redistributive measures have to be stabilised and legitimised. However, in these debates, it is largely overlooked that the middle class is an ambiguous concept which can bear a variety of meanings and argumentative functions. Against this background, this paper does not want to investigate what the middle class is, but rather how it gains meaning in discursive practices in different societies. Empirically, we compare German and Swedish media debates in regard to how meaning is attributed to the middle-class category as well as regarding the latter's role in the legitimisation and problematisation of the welfare state. The analysis reveals that while in the German discourse the middle class' well-being is considered to be the major aim of the welfare state and for the benefit of the whole society, the Swedish discourse is split into two threads: one which criticises the middle class for furthering social gaps and a second one which accuses the universal welfare state for constraining the autonomy of middle-class members. We argue that these differences between (and within) both discourses are due to different interpretive schemes which are anchored in the respective sociocultural context. The analysis thus demonstrates the additional value of an interpretive perspective which helps understanding the specific ways in which the welfare state becomes the object of political debate in different societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a long tradition of debate about the crisis of cities or the crisis of local government in public, political and scholarly circles. The diagnosis of 'the urban crisis' often implies a homogeneous phenomenon with each city facing similar and unambiguous problems. However, we know little about local practices in constructing a city's crisis. Taking discourse analysis as a starting point, we propose an interpretive and comparative framework that investigates how 'the urban crisis' and 'the city' emerge interdependently with specific meanings in different socio-spatial contexts. By comparing the discourses of Frankfurt, Dortmund, Birmingham and Glasgow, we illustrate how in each city the meaning of crisis is constructed differently and how these constructions constitute the collective understanding of the particularities of these cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is in cities where people are most strongly confronted with diversity in an ‘age of migration’. However, comparisons of local integration contexts usually take ethnic boundaries as given or assume that they are constituted by the nation state. Our analysis of local discourses challenges this methodological nationalism. Departing from the ‘distinctiveness of cities’ approach, we scrutinise how Frankfurt, Dortmund, Birmingham and Glasgow differ in how diversity is discursively constructed. We maintain that the discourses not only reflect different frames in dealing with diversity but also serve as a proxy for debating the self-image of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Constructivist approaches to European integration maintain that the meaning of ‘the EU’ is a variable artefact contingent upon context-specific social practices. However, in Europeanisation scholarship, this premise has not yet settled, with the EU typically being treated as an objective reality constituting either adaptational pressures or windows of opportunities for domestic politics. This applies also to the research on the Europeanisation of cities which neglects what Europe means locally. This article addresses this question by proposing a discourse-analytical conceptualisation which investigates the interdependency of urban discursive practices and the political processes of dealing with EU directives. Using the empirical examples of Frankfurt and Dortmund, it is shown how ‘the EU’ is discursively constructed and how these constructions constitute specific spaces of possibilities for implementing the EU directive on ambient air quality. The analysis reveals that cities feature distinct stocks of knowledge which help to explain the locally varying processes of Europeanisation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]