Research In Progress: Senior Moments
by Sebastian Stockman, IQSS March 7, 2007
"It's all up there on the door." That' along with a casual gesture' is Ken Shepsle's response to "what have you been up to lately?" The George D. Markham Professor of Government points to his closet door which is covered in the whiteboardwallpaper that seems to be ubiquitous here at IQSS. Listed in dry-erase marker are Shepsle's works in progress' three books and 11 articles in various states of completion.
He's busy' yes' but you'd hardly know it from his laid-back' courtly demeanor. A heavy publishing schedule is nothing new for Shepsle. He's the author or editor of 12 books more than a few of which have become standard political science texts and more articles than one cares to count.
For the last 15 years or so' Shepsle's research has focused on seniority in a variety of incarnations a fitting topic for a former chair of Harvard's Government Department.
"What I'm interested in are practices that advantage seniors," Shepsle says. "Whether they're seniors in Congress, or elders in East Africa or senior generations in advanced industrial societies."
Shepsle became interested in this topic in the late 1980s when he read a paper by the economist Jacques Cremer called "Cooperation in Ongoing Organizations," which got him thinking about "people thinking about the flow of costs and benefits in an organization over time."
"This planted the idea in my mind that an individual is not merely thinking about being in the organization at the moment, but also down the road," Shepsle says.
Specifically, Shepsle is attracted to those organizational models where younger individuals pay their dues, and senior individuals reap the benefits of earlier dues paid.
"Why don't the young rebel?" Shepsle says, his eyes lighting up. "What are the circumstances that keep it going? In a sense, it's a Ponzi Scheme."
And, what's the biggest Ponzi Scheme of all?
"Social Security worked fine as long as each successive generation was larger than the one before it," Shepsle says. "Our parents' generation lived off the fat of the land - a big Baby Boom generation to support it as it aged. But the Baby Boomers didn't have enough kids, and now the Baby Dearth generation will be saddled with supporting them."
In other words, the post-World War II population bubble - whose oldest members are retiring as you read this - is "the mouse moving through the snake's body." Soon enough, there will be more people drawing out of Social Security than there will be paying into it.
Shepsle is interested not only in exploring the younger generation's devotion to this - seemingly doomed - model, but the effects it might have. That's where the Floridazation Index (which, as Shepsle says, "has nothing to do with the water") comes in.
"It's the year in which a country will have approximately one-third of the population older than age 65 (which was the share of older Floridians in the year 2000)," Shepsle says.
For the U.S., that policy-maker's day of reckoning is just a generation away: it's due to hit in about 2027. In Canada, they have until 2030. For Japan and Germany, Doomsday came in 2003. For Italy, it was 2004.
"These old, graying societies are not only graying, but they're also very generous welfare states," Shepsle says. "They have three options: You can cut benefits - but that's very politically hard to do with the old comprising such a large voting bloc; raise the contributions of current, young workers - that's economically infeasible; or a country can import young people. And so, immigration is a hot political topic not only here, but in most advanced industrial societies. And in so many of these societies young workers tend to be people of color … and that stirs the ethnic pot." Many of those would-be immigrants - for the countries of "Old Europe," at least - are African, South Asian, or Caribbean.
In another project, Shepsle is working with grad student Andy Harris on a paper called "Father, Sons, and Cattle" which concerns "intertemporal deals" (as Shepsle calls them) among East African pastoralists - deals on a much smaller, more personal scale than Social Security and its ilk.
"The father has a herd," Shepsle says. "The son works the herd. He takes care of the herd and, gradually, each year gets a fraction of the offspring to raise as his own - but still with the whole herd. Eventually, the son is self-sufficient and goes off on his own.
" 'Fathers, Sons and Cattle' is part of a larger sub-project on tribal age-grading in pastoralist societies," Shepsle says. "When young, children are property of the family; then, as they age, the men become warriors, and then, after another rite of passage, they become elders."
The same question that crops up in Social Security crops up here: why don't the young rebel?
"If there were a big population explosion," Shepsle says. "Then you have these 18-year-olds saying, 'Why should I hang around these dinky little tribes? Why don't I go to the city?'"
You've noticed by now that each "seniority model" - Social Security and the African tribe - considered so far has dealt with, or is preparing to deal with, the undermining effects of a large-scale population growth.
So, if you know Shepsle from his work on Congress (as most people probably do: his book "The Giant Jigsaw Puzzle: Democratic Committee Assignments in the Modern House" was honored with a 25th anniversary symposium at the 2003 APSA convention), you're wondering: how does a 535-member body suffer a population explosion?
The short answer: it doesn't.
Although it does, as we saw in November, undergo upheaval from time to time.
"Consider the 1974 Watergate congressional elections," Shepsle says. "There were 75 freshmen - that is, new votes in the Democratic caucus. Nearly one-third of the Democrats were freshmen. And they said, 'you mean, we've got to wait to get subcommittee chairs?' They said, 'screw that,' and got rid of the seniority system."
For a time, that is.
The seniority system crept its way back into use throughout the 1980s, and then the Republicans got rid of it in the 1994 "Contract with America" election.
"But the Democrats seem to be going back to it," Shepsle says.
Traditionally, committees are seniority-based, and the chair of a committee is going to be the longest-serving member of the majority party. What happens, though, when two members who came in at the same time are finally up for a leadership post?
Believe it or not, there are times when it comes down to a coin flip - a literal coin flip - made when the two were freshmen Congressmen.
"For some purposes we need to have a pecking order," Shepsle says. "The four freshmen on the Agriculture committee will have the same seniority. So there's a coin flip to break the tie - a kind of natural randomization. What I'm interested in is how that affects the members - in terms of getting re-elected, in terms of moving up the committee, in terms of moving out of the committee. This coin flip can affect (careers) in really dramatic ways."
Shepsle said the paper, "Randomization and Committee Assignments," was just in its "very beginning stages." He is working on it with Mike Kellermann, an IQSS graduate associate whose office - conveniently enough - is just across the hall.
"In my end of the business, work is very collaborative," Shepsle says. "What's terrific for me is collaborating with so many people, especially Harvard's graduate students."
And if he and his collaborators on these seniority projects ever disagree, Shepsle can just pull rank.
To hear more about Ken's work, go to http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=INTERVIEWS_Kenneth_Shepsle