Mettler & Welch (2004) Civic Generation

The civic generation came of age during the Depression and WWII. They are a highly civically engage generation--yet why? In the wake of a macro social capital decline, in order to understand why its declining we need to understand why the "greatest generation" was so great. Mettler and Welch suggest a policy feedback theory--one that combines the macro level and micro level observations (historical institutionism and behavioralism)--can lend an explanation to why that particular generation was and is so great.

Policy feedback effects:
Policies themselves shape subsequent political activity. Thus policies have the potential to "make" citizens... citizens that would have refrained from political activity, had a policy that affected them not been instated, now have motive to participate.

Paul Pierson heads this theory, in political science. policies "make" citizens in two ways:
(1) resource effects: policies give citizens resources that might not have had without the policy
(2) interpretive effects: policies also convey meaning; for example, the GI Bill was an indicator to veterans that the government wanted to reward them for their service with free education. Similarly, welfare policy somewhat demeans recipients, making their feel less than worthy of the "handouts" and a number of theories suggest this is one reason welfare recipients are less likely to be political engaged/active.

Mettler takes Pierson's resource effects and interpretive effects a bit farther to suggest the resource effects enables our capacities (skills etc.), and intrepretive effects have a psychological effect (see the above example about welfare, I gave).

Research Design:
Case Study: GI Bill--utilized by over 50% of veterans.
Three successive Time periods:
1950-1964
1964-1979
1980-1998

Hypotheses:
the GI Bill with have an "interpretive" effect for the 1950-1964 respondents; these respondents' memories of the benefits from government are the most salient. thus appreciating the GI Bill, and understanding it is from government, this generation of respondents are more likely to be active on account of that.
the later generations are more likely to be political active on account of "resource" effects; now well into their years, the GI Bill enabled them to get an education--it is this education that has brought them resources tantamount to SES resources which lead to high levels of political activity.

Findings:
confirmed; interpretive effects lead GI Bill recipients to be politically active from 1950-1964; then those who went on to use the GI Bill for higher education maintained political activity (from 1964-1998) on account of resource effects.