Statecraft and incremental change: Explaining the success of pension reforms in the United Kingdom

How were comprehensive pension reforms in the UK successfully developed, enacted and implemented from 2002 to 2015, despite changes in government composition and the financial crisis? Why were they not subject to policy conflict, electoral competition and policy reversal? Drawing on actor-centred historical institutionalism and thirty interviews with key actors, we demonstrate the critical role played by a limited number of politicians and policy entrepreneurs and their ideas and agency. Institutional continuity with the Beveridgean policy legacies of the pension system and the United Kingdom’s `growth regime’ enabled a coalition space to open up for policy agreement. between the government and Opposition parties, and for partisan electoral competition over the reforms to be `bracketed’. The incremental and interlocking nature of the reform package reduced interest group opposition and enabled a centralisation of decision-making power. A long-term timeframe for reform cemented the formation of an elite coalition and buttressed political control. Cross-party support for the reform package, coupled with judicious phasing of the implementation of auto-enrolment and fiscal reforms, enabled it to withstand the impact of the financial crisis and the austerity that followed it, and to minimise opposition among the critical electoral constituency of older voters. The dominance of the reform process by political actors and policy entrepreneurs in the UK nonetheless came at a price, as institutional continuity and incrementalism foreclosed alternative reforms. We demonstrate the importance of political statecraft and policy entrepreneurship in the UK pensions’ reform process, but within boundaries set by its institutional context.

Measuring intra-generational redistribution in PAYG pension schemes

Voters in ageing societies expect pension reforms to be both inter-generationally and intra-generationally fair. In this paper, we propose a global measure of intra-generational redistribution in pay-as-you-go pension schemes as a basis for voters’ evaluations of reforms. Our novel index only requires information on contributions by and pension benefits paid to retirees, enabling us to measure intra-generational redistribution isolated from possible inter-generational redistribution. We rely on the contribution records of approximately 100,000 Germans, who progressed into retirement in 2007–2015, to measure the level of intra-generational redistribution in the German statutory pension scheme (GRV). A recent reform of the childcare benefit provision, which became effective in 2014, confirms the predictions of our index. The reform introduced additional benefits for a substantial subgroup of German mothers, owing to which the index value for women, but not for men, jumps up. Our findings suggests that GRV fulfills the ideal of a Bismarckian pension system without intra-generational redistribution for men, while women benefit significantly from intra-generational redistribution.

France’s regional results intensify presidential race

Significance Neither Macron’s La Republique en Marche (LREM) nor Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) managed to win any of the country’s 13 regions. The main winner was the centre-right Republican Party (LR), to the extent that it hopes to overhaul Macron in the first round of next year’s presidential election. Impacts If internal party pressure forces Le Pen to adopt a more hard-line stance, she risks alienating centre-right voters. Electoral considerations will make Macron wary of imposing future COVID-19-related restrictions. While pursuing pension reforms prior to 2022 could improve Macron’s reformist credentials, it risks provoking more social unrest.

Foreign policy fatigue? Russian mass media agenda setting strategies and public opinion on the 2018 pension reforms

The scholarship on Russian media is beset with the assumption that the Russian public is unable to ‘vote with their remote’ in a homogenously pro-regime media environment and instead passively accepts messaging from the official mass media. This assumption is assessed here in a case study using quantitative content methods to examine the discrepancies between official mass media agenda-setting and public opinion during the period of salience of the news event of the 2018 pension reforms. The pension reform, as an obtrusive domestic political issue in contrast to the unobtrusive international news events which dominate Russian news coverage, stood out asone of the major events of the year in the view of the Russian public. This article finds that official mass media undertook agenda-setting measures to de-emphasize negative aspects of the pension reform news events, emphasize positive aspects, and distract public attention towards more sensationalist foreign policy news items. However, it also finds that public opinion priorities on news issues were incongruent with media agenda-setting, indicating that official mass media messages are not accepted uncritically by the Russian public. 

Confronting Pension Reform: Public Employees’ Psychological Contract Breach, Negative Perception, Regret, and the Moderating Role of PSM

Although pension reform has been a global trend in the last couple of decades, public administration research has seldom addressed the issue of how targeted pension reforms affect civil servants. The goal of this study is to conceptualize pension reform as the breach of the psychological contract between the government and civil servants and to understand whether it leads to the experience of regret in civil servants over choosing a government career. In doing so, this study also explores the possible role of public service motivation (PSM) in moderating the experience of regret elicited by psychological contract breach as well as the negative perception of the pension reform. The analysis of the data collected from 944 Taiwanese public employees shows that (i) both psychological contract breach and negative perception trigger regret and (ii) PSM strengthens the impacts of psychological contract breach and the negative perception of the pension reform. The findings have critical implications for both practitioners handling pension reforms and researchers interested in building a theory of PSM.

Reference Points for Retirement Behavior: Evidence from German Pension Discontinuities

This paper studies the large concentration of retirement behavior around statutory retirement ages, a puzzling stylized fact. To investigate this fact, I estimate bunching responses to 644 pension benefit discontinuities, using administrative data on the universe of German retirees. Financial incentives alone cannot explain retirement patterns, but there is a large direct effect of statutory retirement ages. I argue that the framing of statutory ages as reference points for retirement provides a plausible explanation. Simulations based on a model with reference dependence highlight that shifting statutory ages via pension reforms is an effective policy to influence retirement behavior. (JEL D91, H55, J26, J32)

Government strategies for supporting the adult worker model in European countries: mixed implications for defamilisation

PurposeThis article explores the link between defamilisation studies and studies of the adult worker model and discusses the mixed implications that government strategies for supporting the adult worker model have for defamilisation. The adult worker model emphasises that all adult men and women ought to engage in formal employment; defamilisation studies stress the importance of enhancing women's chances of choosing (not) to perform important family roles such as the receiver of financial support and the care provider.Design/methodology/approachTwo new strategies (“condition building” and “rewarding/penalising”) for promoting the adult worker model are identified based on literature review; their empirical significance is explored through an examination of comparative data concerning early childhood education and care policies (ECEC) and reforms in pension age in 14 countries.FindingsThe evidence shows that promoting the adult worker model does not necessarily benefit all women. While the 14 countries provide ECEC to varying extents, the increase in pension age in most countries shows that governments adopt a “rewarding/penalising” strategy for promoting the adult worker model by allocating major welfare based on people's labour force participation. These pension reforms may generate a negative impact on women's chances of attaining financial autonomy.Originality/valueThis study presents two new strategies for promoting the adult worker model and shows the empirical significance of these strategies based on comparative data. It also highlights the importance of searching for alternative concepts, namely economic defamilisation, for guiding pension reforms.