Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.3935/rsp.v9i1.184
The Political Economy of the Pension Reform in Latin America
Katharina Müller
; Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik
Abstract
Ten years after the Chilean precedent, a wave of pension privatisations started sweeping Latin America. By now, a total of ten countries in the region have opted for a full or partial shift from a Bismarckian-style pay-as-you-go scheme to private pension funds. This radical change in retirement provision defies conventional wisdom in welfare state research: political scientists, sociologists and economists have long coincided in stressing the resilience of the existing retirement arrangements. Hence fresh research into the political making of old-age security reform is needed. Here, the cases of Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and Uruguay are analysed comparatively, in order to contribute to the broader body of literature on the political economy of policy reform. The paper explains how a paradigm shift in social security can be politically feasible under democratic regimes. The driving forces proved to be Ministries of Finance and Economics, backed by policy advice and financial support from the international financial institutions, while many local pressure groups opposed structural pension reforms. Their room for manoeuvre was shaped by economic conditions, political and institutional factors and by the role of earlier policy choices. The paper also stresses the strategic importance of the reform design, pointing to cases of strategic bundling, tactical packaging and compensation.
Keywords
pension reform; privatisation; Latin America
Hrčak ID:
30079
URI
Publication date:
1.1.2002.
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