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Social Security Politics: Ideology and Reform

¹ Carolina Program in Health and Aging Research, Institute on Aging, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
² Institute for Health and Aging, University of California, San Francisco.

Address correspondence to Judie Svihula, Institute on Aging, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 720 Martin Luther King, Jr., Blvd., CB #1030, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-1030. E-mail: jsvihula{at}schsr.unc.edu

Objectives. The purpose of this study was to examine the distribution of dominant values, actors, and ideological advocacy coalitions influencing the Social Security debate across two presidential administrations.

Methods. Through content and cluster analyses, we analyzed federal legislative hearing testimonies on Social Security reform spanning 11 years.

Results. Witnesses consistently expressed six dominant values: (a) advancing the market, (b) self-interest, (c) generational equity, (d) belief in market activity, (e) recommendations for market solutions, and (f) favoring the replacement of Social Security with private accounts. We identified three advocacy coalitions: conservative, progressive, and nonaligned. Conservatives dominated the hearings and were more consistent in their expression of market values when compared to progressives, who expressed social contract values less frequently. Congressional Democrats were inconsistent in upholding Social Security's social contract values. The distribution of testimonies paralleled historical, political, and economic events.

Discussion. Our research indicates that one can interpret social policies as well as policy options as sets of values, and these as ideological models. We anticipate that the coherence on one political ideological view (market) and the relative lack of consistency in another (social contract) will be highly consequential for the future of Social Security, U.S. politics, and the public.