through political compromise. Rather, in the United States, investment in the long term emerged
despite the fact that no single set of actors sought it. Rather the logic of institutional constraint
reconfigured their dilemma in intertemporal terms. The dynamic suggests that policy investment
may emerge from environments and interactions devoid of actors with intertemporal motivations.
Merely by defending their distributive interests, actors with mutual veto power over each others’
plans may bargain their way to an intertemporal outcome. If the study retrenchment needs to pay
careful attention to the politics of timing, then it is equally true that the study of policy investment
needs to be tightly integrated with insights into the politics of distribution. Intertemporal choice
will often be, in a fundamental sense, the extension of distributive conflict by other means.
References
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"1974 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance
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"1975 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance
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"1976 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance
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"1978 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance
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"1982 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance
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"1983 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance
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