Politics of Aging

Abstract

Although social gerontology had evolved for 20 years or more prior to 1969, the contribution to it made by political science was minimal. While a handful of pioneering political scientists in this period did pursue research in the aging field, they were not generally recognized for such work among their disciplinary peers, nor were they regarded as part of the social gerontology mainstream. Over the past decade, however, this picture has changed fundamentally as several political scientists have gained a significant measure of recognition for their aging research and a number of promising younger scholars are manifesting a -marked interest. In explaining this interesting development, events external to political science are viewed as facilitating factors, while a factor of more fundamental import is seen in paradigm change occurring within the discipline. Whereas earlier political science paradigms tended to dismiss all policy studies-old age policy included-as mere "applied" research worthy of little esteem, an emergent "post-behavioral" trend recently has made policy studies decidedly respectable; in addition, the early paradigm in the subfield of political socialization, which looked dubiously on the possibility of significant socialization occurring in adulthood, now is being challenged by an emergent "generational" or "life cycle" theory. As a consequence, the discipline is now witnessing an increasing level of support for aging studies and a growth in focused concern with the topic among its members.