The third rail of American politics: Senior citizen activism and the American welfare state

Social Security has been called the third rail of American politics: touch it and you're dead. This dissertation shows why Social Security has earned this moniker and provides compelling empirical evidence for the assumption behind decades of participation research---that participation differences result in differential policy outcomes. Senior citizens in the United States are more active in politics than younger citizens; they vote, make campaign contributions, work on campaigns and contact elected officials at higher rates than nonseniors. Furthermore, they react to threats to their programs---proposed benefit cuts, eligibility changes---with surges in letter writing to Congress. With these surges, senior participation sends a distinctive message to government: do not tamper with Social Security and Medicare. Members of Congress hear and heed this message, withdrawing the offending proposals. Hence participation influences policy.;Furthermore, this work contributes to the policy feedback concept from the historical institutionalist literature by showing that seniors' disproportionately high participation is due in part to seniors' welfare state programs themselves. Over time Social Security has provided the once-marginalized senior population with politically relevant resources like income and free time, has increased seniors' engagement with politics by tying their well-being directly to government action, and has fashioned for an otherwise disparate group a new political identity as program recipients, which provides a basis for political mobilization by interest groups and political parties.;Senior activity around Social Security also exhibits an unusual pattern. For most political activities, participation increases with income. But in activity specifically around Social Security---voting, giving money, and letter writing with regard to the program---it is low-income seniors who are more active, because they derive a larger portion of their income from the program. Hence this is a rare instance in which self-interest operates. And it is an unusual instance of political mobilization of low-income people in the U.S.;Ultimately this study looks across social programs and shows that program design and its influence on recipient participation has profound implications for politics---electoral politics, the politics of distribution and the politics of retrenchment.