| This exploratory study seeks to answer the fundamental question, "What actors and values are influencing the United States Social Security debate?" The three aims are to: (1) globally and historically contextualize the Social Security reform debate; (2) empirically analyze the testimonies of actors and their expressed values, beliefs and positions on Social Security reform utilizing the advocacy coalition framework (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, 1993); and (3) examine the study findings within theoretical frameworks including: political process, political economy, social movement, cultural sociology, and social constructionism. The study chronicles the history of Social Security reform and provides an analysis of federal legislative hearings between 1993 and 2003. Data analyses of legislative hearings reveal six value domains under consideration in the Social Security reform debate. Dominant values consistently expressed by testifiers were: (1) advancing the market; (2) self interest; (3) generational equity; (4) belief in market activity; (5) recommendations for market solutions; and (6) favoring the replacement of Social Security with private accounts. The six dominant values are aligned with the market ideology. Three advocacy coalitions were identified: conservative, progressive and mixed. Nearly half of the testimonies were classified as conservative, one-third were classified as progressive, and a fifth were classified as mixed. Cluster analyses show that conservatives dominated the legislative hearings and that their values reflected the market ideology. Conservatives were more consistent in their expression of conservative values when compared to progressives (who expressed progressive values less frequently). Think tanks were the largest affiliation group of testifiers, followed by government agencies, and membership/interest groups. Hearing testimony frequencies varied considerably over time in accord with historical, political, and economic events. Advocacy coalition members remained relatively stable over the study period in the conservative and progressive advocacy coalitions. Historically, the social contract ideology was the dominant rationale for the program. Study findings are consistent with the increasing trend toward dominance of the market ideology in global and national economic and pension policies. |
