Social Construction

The social construction framework was proposed by Schneider and Ingram in 1993 and sought to explain the allocation of burdens and benefits to different groups of people in society based on their power and social construction, that is “the cultural characterizations or popular images of the persons or groups affected by the public policy.” In this essay, I will be evaluating the social construction framework on various levels of analysis and explain why I think this framework is effective in explaining how the interplay of political and social factors affects agenda setting and leads to the unequal allocation of benefits and burdens in society. Thereafter, I will explain why I think the same framework is limited when it comes to fully explaining the public policy process especially in non-democracies.
The social construction framework is differentiated from other frameworks of public policy making by its focus on not just the power invested in groups of people, but also on the social construction of these “target populations” and how the “dynamic interaction of power and social constructions leads to a distinctive pattern in the allocation of burdens and benefits” through the use of public policy. I think that the reason why I feel the framework is useful and effective is because it is able to offer an answer to Lasswell’s lasting question of “who gets what, when, and how” by attempting to dissect the complex interplay of social and political factors in the process of public policy making.
According to Schneider and Ingram, the four TPs are the advantaged (positively viewed powerful people), contenders (negatively viewed powerful people), dependents (positively viewed powerless people) and deviants (negatively viewed powerless people). In my opinion, the SC framework is superior to many others in their specification of these TPs based on both their social construction and power as it serves to explain many anomalies and exceptions that other frameworks which only