Noel Whiteside

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

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.

Shifting responsibilities in Western European pension systems: What future for social models?:

A liberal paradigm shift from state to private responsibility in old age income protection has been a general development across Western Europe. The financial crisis sheds new light on the question of the public–private divide in pension policy. Applying convention theory, the analysis reviews how funded pensions are governed and how states use a range of regulation to control their operations as they seek to convert market-related practices to social policy purposes. The article argues that accruing state regulation consequent on coping with the financial crisis and its aftermath has undermined easy distinctions between public and private schemes, and is generating increasingly technocratic and oligarchic forms of pension governance, to the detriment of democratic debate on pensions.

Comparing Welfare States: Social Protection and Industrial Politics in France and Britain, 1930-1960:

In most comparative studies of welfare states, the remit of social legislation is taken as given. Little attention is paid to political convention which determines the scope and viability of specific types of state intervention. By focusing on the conventions which underpinned broader labour market policies, this article demonstrates how established parameters of state action defined contrasting spheres of social protection in these two countries in a period of welfare reform. In France, state regulation of the labour market emerged as the source of social protection and equity; in Britain, continuities rooted in a liberal pol itical economy meant that industrial relations and social welfare remained separate spheres. Using legislative provision (such as social insurance) as a basis for comparative studies distorts academic analysis because the contex tual significance of such provision varies - not only between countries, but also within dif ferent industrial and regional contexts as well as over time.

Governing pension fund capitalism in times of uncertainty

For over two decades, western democracies have sought to transfer public liabilities for retirement income into private hands in order to contain welfare state costs and boost financial markets. This transformation is commonly viewed in terms of privatization and increased personal responsibility for old age security. Following the recent financial crisis, persistent economic instability is revealing the limitations of pension fund capitalism. Expected returns on private savings have collapsed and funded defined benefit (DB) schemes are falling into deficit, prompting demands for renewed public intervention. However, the current crisis has also increased public debt and limited welfare state capacity: combined with demographic challenges, this has forced the containment of public systems as well. The crisis of 2008 and its aftermath have demonstrated that commonly held distinctions between state and private pension provision have broken down. In some countries, governments extended help to safeguard private schemes. In others, governments have raided pension funds to shore up public account balances. As distinctions between public and private dissolve, responsibility diffuses. As with Europe’s financial crisis in general, this is a problem of governance as much as a problem of finance. As the state has transformed from pension provider to pension guarantor, implications arise for pension governance. Can public–private partnerships in pension provision create schemes that are economically efficient and socially fair? In what ways, using what instruments – and with what degree of success – have governments tried to make private schemes publicly accountable and promoted pension security? How far have pension providers been converted to public purposes? Most importantly, what consequences has

Human Rights and Ethical Reasoning: Capabilities, Conventions and Spheres of Public Action

This interdisciplinary article argues that human rights must be understood in terms of opportunities for social participation and that social and economic rights are integral to any discussion of the subject. We offer both a social constructionist and a normative framework for a sociology of human rights which reaches beyond liberal individualism, combining insights from the work of Amartya Sen and from French convention theory. Following Sen, we argue that human rights are founded on the promotion of human capabilities as ethical demands shaped by public reasoning. Using French convention theory, we show how the terms of such deliberation are shaped by different constructions of collectively held values and the compromises reached between them. We conclude by demonstrating how our approach offers a new perspective on spheres of public action and the role these should play in promoting social cohesion, individual capabilities and human rights.

The promotion of capabilities in Sweden: a case study of the contraction of shipbuilding in Gothenburg

Purpose – Using the example of a project dedicated to labour market re‐activation in major shipyards in Sweden (Gothenburg) in the late 1970s, the purpose of this paper is to examine how integrated employment policies may be achieved using more deliberative public action than that offered by New Public Management (NPM).Design/methodology/approach – Based on original archival research and interviews with ex‐participants, the research reconstructs how this project was designed and operated; its analysis is based on a capability perspective.Findings – The paper analyses the problems encountered by projects promoting labour market integration and personal capabilities in the context of a productivity drive in a contracting industry that requires the retention of the most productive workers to stave off industrial collapse. It argues that deliberative democracy offers the more effective means for co‐ordinating integrated employment policies than governance strategies associated with NPM.Practical implications ...

Unemployment revisited in comparative perspective: labour market policy in Strasbourg and Liverpool, 1890–1914

Many historical studies, some of them comparative, have explored the foundations of welfare states and the birth of unemployment policies in Europe in the late nineteenth century. Nearly all have focused on political debate at national level. This paper bases its analysis on labour market reforms initiated in Strasbourg and Liverpool in the decades preceding World War I. It explores how bona fide unemployed workers, the proper clients of official help, were distinguished from the mass of the poor and indigent. The labour market had to be defined and organized before policies for the unemployed could be put in place. The object is to demonstrate not only how this was done, but also how different perceptions of social justice and economic efficiency influenced both the process and the outcomes of public interventions, in this instance undermining attempts to transfer specific policies from one country to another.

Regulating Markets: The Real Costs of Poly‐Centric Administration under the National Health Insurance Scheme (1912–46)

Using a transaction cost perspective, this article explores the administrative costs involved in quasi-market systems of public service delivery. Employing the historical example of the interwar National Health Insurance scheme, it revives Beveridge’s early criticisms of the duplication and expense incurred by the utilization of approved societies for benefit administration purposes. To this we should add the costs incurred by central audit and actuarial evaluation, the main mechanisms through which the societies were centrally regulated. The article concludes that, thanks to regulatory requirements, this poly-centric system of public administration was more expensive than a state-run equivalent – and that this message has significance for recent reforms. In the course of the analysis, the narrowness of a ‘pure’ transaction cost perspective is demonstrated and common assumptions concerning distinctions between ‘the state and the market’ in administrative structures are drawn into question. The division of public administration into these two typologies is arguably based on a false dichotomy.

Transforming European Employment Policy

Since the mid 1990s, the focus of European employment and social policy has shifted from protection to promotion. This book provides a timely analysis of this new form of governance, and the new forms of policy delivery and audit which accompany it.

Privatization and after: time, complexity and governance in the world of funded pensions

Externalities consequent on pension privatization have returned to haunt governments: externalities revealed in falling asset returns, rising administrative costs and increasingly intermittent contributions that reflect more intermittent employment. This article reviews the regulatory complexities following the promotion of personal private pensions, identifies the governance problems these entail and suggests a few measures to restore public confidence and trust. It draws our attention to the political as well as market-based risks implicit in new systems by showing how governments have adapted commercial pension provision to serve social ends and to safeguard the public finances in more ways than one. The conclusions identify solutions to issues that need urgent attention, notably the opaque nature of annuity markets, the provision of independent monitoring and information capacity and a possible reconstruction of retirement itself.