Transnational actors in central and east European pension reforms

Abstract

The literature on welfare states in developed democracies has been dominated by a national political economy perspective in which key decisions about welfare state development and change are determined by national politics, economic forces, and demography (Cameron, 1978; Garrett, 1998; Katzenstein, 1985; Pierson, 1994). One school of thought views welfare state programmes as national responses to economic pressures caused by openness to international trade (Cameron, 1978; Katzenstein, 1985) while another emphasizes path-dependencies caused by political interest groups defending the benefits they derive from specific government programmes (Pierson, 1994). Much of this national politics literature has sought to refute the proposition that globalization has greatly impacted developed welfare states in Western Europe (Garrett, 1998; Iversen, 2005; Swank, 2002). Yet the highly visible campaign by the World Bank, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other organizations to promote pension privatization by replacing social-security-type systems with those based on private, individual pension savings accounts has prompted a growing enquiry into the role of transnational actors in developing country welfare states (Brooks, 2004; Cerami, 2006; Chlon-Dominczak and Móra, 2003; Cook, 2007a; Deacon, 1997; Madrid, 2003; Müller, 2003; Nelson, 2004; Orenstein, 2008a; Weyland, 2004).