Age for Leisure? Political Mediation and the Impact of the Pension Movement on U.S. Old-Age Policy

tion to the consequences of social movements (cf. McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1988 and Amenta and Caren 2004). Much of this work has focused on the external consequences of movements, especially those relating to states and struggles over legislation. Despite this work, one reviewer (Giugni 2004) recently argued that our knowledge accumulation on the subject has thus far been minor. Others (McAdam 1999; Zald 2000) argue that the political process and resource mobilization models do not help to explain the consequences of these movements. Other reviewers (Burstein and Linton 2002) claim that quantitative analyses in this area have frequently been misspecified and that when public opinion is taken into account challengers are found to have little direct influence on state-related outcomes. In this paper, we seek to contribute to this debate by elaborating and appraising a political mediation theory of social movement consequences (Piven and Cloward 1977; Amenta, Carruthers, and Zylan 1992; Skocpol 1992; Amenta, Bernstein, and Dunleavy 1994; Fording 1997; Amenta, Halfmann, and Young 1999; Lipset and Marks 2000). Instead of asking whether movements are generally influential or whether certain aspects of movements are always influential, as others have done, we Age for Leisure? Political Mediation and the Impact of the Pension Movement on U.S. Old-Age Policy