Triggering support: understanding common-sense assumptions that underlie social policy discourse and their implications in the 2019-2020 U.S. presidential debates

This research paper is a critical discourse analysis of the perceived role of the government in social policy and their underlying ideologies as put forth by Republican and Democrat candidates in the 2019-2020 presidential primary debates. In this research I argue that the competing discourses on social policy employed by the presidential candidates were laden with common-sense assumptions that are based on the unholy trinity of historically prevalent ideologies of ‘deserving’/’undeserving’, individual responsibility, and austerity. Yet these constructs were also challenged by a counter-narrative of social citizenship through the proposal of citizenship-based entitlements and processes of decommodification/defamilialization by Democrat candidates. The prevalence of these counter-narratives in the context of rigid political systems and the hegemonic control of economic liberalism challenges claims that policy is constrained by constructs put forth by political scientists such as Lowi (1964), as well as Schneider and Ingram (1993). Instead, revealing the more flexible nature of ideologies, and the potential for counter-narratives to disrupt these processes of power.