Introduction

Abstract

Social Security politics cannot be fully understood through an analysis of political power or political ideology alone. Beechey argues for an analysis of the social construction of target populations to understand the politics that surround a policy and introduces the concept of deservingness in the context of the literature on undeservingness in welfare policy and the two-tiered US welfare state. Beechey describes her intersectionality informed, interpretive policy approach to analyzing the Social Security privatization debates, launched by President George W. Bush in 2005, as captured on the Congressional Record. While these debates ultimately yielded no policy change, they offer an instructive policy window into the politics of Social Security for contemporary reform proposals, including those proposed in the 2016 presidential campaigns.