Powerful representation of the poor? German welfare associations' narrative advocacy during <scp>COVID</scp>‐19

Abstract The COVID‐19 pandemic sparked unprecedented experimentation in the German social assistance system, leading to changes previously considered impracticable by policymakers. This included a sanctions moratorium, easier access to benefits, and temporary cash transfers, all of which were advocated by welfare associations—key organized interests representing the powerless in German neo‐corporatist social policymaking. Many of these controversial measures were integrated into Citizens' Benefit by the pandemic's end, a landmark social assistance reform. By merging the Narrative Policy Framework with the interpretivist paradigm and incorporating Steven Lukes's power conception, this article examines how welfare associations leveraged crisis‐driven welfare experimentation to advance reform. Narrative strands are identified and reconstructed through an analysis of welfare associations' advocacy during COVID‐19 in newspapers, press releases, and nine qualitative interviews with key practitioners. This is juxtaposed with adversarial actors' counternarrative during the pandemic. I argue welfare associations expanded the scope of conflict to influence expansionary social policy reform by recasting benefit recipients as deserving victims of a neglectful system. Ultimately, this article provides a theoretical and empirical pathway forward for policy studies and the NPF to grasp how narrative power dynamics shape the policy process.