Citation
Smith, Candis Watts & Kreitzer, Rebecca J. (Online ahead of print). Where's the Party in Social Construction Theory?: Partisan Mappings of Politically Relevant Target Groups. Journal of Politics.Abstract
The social construction theory of target populations has proven to be powerfully predictive, showing that policymakers are incentivized to do good things for “good people,” but produce punitive policies for “deviants.” While establishing an important conceptual framework, the theory doesn’t address the idea that various subgroups in society may evaluate policy targets differently. Here, we focus on the key issue of partisan identity, a lens through which American policymakers and citizens view the world. Our study is an extension of this original work, building a bridge between critical policy scholars and scholars of political attitudes and behavior. By relying on crowdsourcing, we (a) assess the extent to which consensus emerges around social constructions, and (b) determine the role that partisan identity plays in producing vastly different worldviews around dozens of groups. We find that there are multiple mappings of the groups because several social constructions pivot on party lines.URL
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/726956Reference Type
Journal ArticleYear Published
Online ahead of printJournal Title
Journal of PoliticsAuthor(s)
Smith, Candis WattsKreitzer, Rebecca J.