Adapting private pensions to public purposes: historical perspectives on the politics of reform

Abstract

This paper compares how extensions of pension rights were developed and implemented in major European economies in the decades following the Second World War. Governments in Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain adapted earnings-related systems as a common policy agenda to meet rising public demand for more generous pension provision. However, this generated divergent policy pathways as a common approach became translated through different institutional mechanisms and different conventions of governance - the points at which states could legitimately intervene to secure policy goals. In consequence, divisions between public and private pension provision (and the boundaries of welfare states) were blurred by the emergence of institutional hybrids. Neither state nor market, these developed in continental Europe as negotiated compromises that fostered social representation in the management of collective provision under various forms. By contrast, in the UK such governing conventions were absent and, hence, the division between public and private has proved more deep-rooted. Historical precedent suggests that current pressures towards private pension solutions cannot but produce another compromise in the form of a public-private hybrid to reconcile financial imperatives with popular demands for pension security.

Unreformed or Hybrid? Accounting for Pension Arrangements Diversity in the EU

“…The emulation of existing systems seems to have limited the range of possibilities and gave rise to a branching process. Furthermore, specific developments can explain the divergence of occupational systems: firm-specific in Germany, inter-professional in France and Sweden and inter-branch in the Netherlands (Whiteside 2006).…”

“…Other information comes fromAdam (2004);Anderson (2005); Taylor-Gooby (2005); EU (2006);Whiteside (2006);Bonoli and Palier (2007) …”

Portability of Supplementary Pension Rights in Europe: A Lowest Common Denominator Solution

“…An exception was Germany (and partly France), where supplementary unfunded schemes, so‐called book reserves, have been popularized after the Second World War. They serve both as a means of cheap financing for German enterprises, and thus helped the reconstruction (Whiteside 2006); as well as a staff retention device, which is crucial for a Coordinated Market Economy (CME) such as Germany, where innovation is incremental and carried out by loyal staff (Hall and Soskice 2001).…”

Public–Private Partnerships in European Old‐Age Pension Provision: An Accountability Perspective

“…For a long time, administrative hybridity was not much more than a secondary topic in analyses of hybridity in pension policies (e.g. O'Higgins ; Orenstein ; Whiteside ). In the last few years, various comparative analyses (e.g.…”