Attitudes in Evaluating Deservingness & Power in Target Populations

• In Event: Policy Design for Democracy: Theoretical Perspectives

Abstract

The policy design literature understands the construction of target populations to influence target populations’ own sense of political efficacy. Recent publications also find that the construction of groups influences the acceptability of policy designs directed at target populations. Much of this work focuses on fairly limited policy design variations and limited variation in target population characteristics. Aside from work by Kreitzer and Smith (2018), less is known about the formations of perceived identities of target populations by the mass public. In this paper we ask two related questions: Why are populations perceived as deserving? Why are populations perceived as powerful? We use a national survey (n=3,358) administered by YouGov to investigate the antecedents of deservingness and power in 25 target populations. First, we specifically examine the role of general demographic characteristics such as race, gender, and income along with partisanship. Then, using principal component analysis we demonstrate how these 25 target populations fall along deservingness and power dimensions. In addition, our survey design allows us to test the extent to which an individual thinks of themself as powerful and deserving influences perception of other groups and groups like them. This creates a measure of social distance from each target population, further adding to possible dimensions of target population analysis. Finally, we take advantage of open-ended survey responses evaluating targe populations from each of the four in the Schneider and Ingram typology of advantaged, contender, dependent, and deviant groups. These open ended responses allow for sentiment analysis to provide a novel test of validity of these constructs. This research provides a further understanding of the emotional and affective bases of perceptions of deservingness and power.

Authors

• Chris Koski, Reed College

• Paul Manson, Portland State University