Ageing and the politics of pension reforms in Central Europe, South-Eastern Europe and the Baltic States

作者：Cerami Alfio^*

来源：International Journal of Social Welfare, 2011, 20(4): 331-343.

DOI：10.1111/j.1468-2397.2010.00748.x

• ageing
• Eastern Europe
• institutional change
• discourse
• neo-liberalism
• public pensions

This article investigates ageing and the politics of pension reforms in Central Europe, South-Eastern Europe and the Baltic States. It emphasises the importance of historical legacies, presence of veto points, trade unions' power, electoral rules and country-specific patterns of political competition, but it also highlights the central role in institutional change played by other concomitant factors, such as those associated with the communicative actions of national and international actors. The role played by power politics, class conflicts and strategic use of social policies is also emphasised. The main argument put forward in this article is that pressures for reforms in the pension systems have not only been the response of demographic, of a new consensus found on new economic ideas and discourses that saw in the privatisation of the economy a new modernisation paradigm.

• 出版日期2011-10