Powerful Representation through Advocacy Storytelling: German Welfare Associations’ Policy Narrative Strategies during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic sparked substantial emergency welfare reforms in Germany. Significantly, contentious changes to basic social assistance, colloquially known as Hartz IV, were effected through a temporary sanctions moratorium and increasingly unconditional access to benefits. The free welfare associations (Freie Wohlfahrtspflege), long overlooked in policy research, were particularly active in reform processes and public discourse as institutionalized – and thus powerful – civil society representatives of disempowered groups such as the long-termed unemployed and the poor. This contribution therefore seeks to uncover how federal welfare associations advocated for the marginalized by identifying ‘process’ narrative elements in the policy cycle of emergency measures during the pandemic (Kuenzler and Stauffer 2022). Building on previous narrative research (Smith Ochoa 2020; Smith Ochoa et al. 2021) and following Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) scholarship (Blum and Kuhlmann 2019; Schlaufer et al. 2022), I argue that narrativized representations of vulnerable groups as deserving victims of a neglectful system were integral to legitimizing enduring and potentially transformative social policies. Theoretical insights from Steven Lukes’ (2005) approach on power are furthermore adopted, conceptualizing welfare associations as powerful collective actors with both the ability to shape policy processes in corporatist policymaking as well as the capacity to influence public perceptions through regular interventions in media and political debates. In line with the NPF, narrative policy strategies are identified and reconstructed using a narrative analysis of welfare associations’ storytelling in print media (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Süddeutsche Zeitung), press releases, as well as nine semi-structured qualitative interviews with leading welfare association practitioners. Ultimately, welfare associations engage in power conflicts in policy processes by effectively utilizing narrative elements that combine emotional, moral characterizations of victimhood with legalistic advocacy of social citizenship through guaranteed rights. References Blum, S. and Kuhlmann, J. (2019) Stories of how to give or take – towards a typology of social policy reform narratives, in: Policy and Society, 38(3), 339–355. Kuenzler, J. and Stauffer, B. (2022) Policy Dimension: A New Concept to Distinguish Substance from Process in the Narrative Policy Framework, in: Policy Studies Journal, Early view. Lukes, S. (2005) Power: A Radical View, 2nd edn, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Schlaufer, C., Kuenzler, J., Jones, M. D. and Shanahan, E. A. (2022) The Narrative Policy Framework: A Traveler’s Guide to Policy Stories, in: Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 63(2), 249–273. Smith Ochoa, C. (2020) Trivializing inequality by narrating facts: a discourse analysis of contending storylines in Germany, in: Critical Policy Studies, 14(3), 319–338. Smith Ochoa, C., Gadinger, F. and Yildiz, T. (2021) Surveillance under dispute: Conceptualising narrative legitimation politics, in: European Journal of International Security, 6(2), 210–232