Patrik Marier

Empowering Epistemic Communities: Specialised Politicians, Policy Experts and Policy Reform

A handful of Swedish parliamentarians, assisted by experts within the civil service, generated one of the most discussed pension reforms since the Chilean reform of the 1980s. This article argues that they formed a successful epistemic community. The group shared similar pension values, a commitment to finding a long-term solution, and a devotion to improving the pension system. The inclusion of politicians within epistemic communities is essential to transpose knowledge into policy. Politicians involved in committees possess political knowledge necessary to bridge the gap between the experts and other legislators and the specialised knowledge needed to interact with members of the scientific community. Contrary to a ‘traditional’ epistemic community, this ‘political’ epistemic community had privileged access to the state and could translate directly the results of its discussions into concrete policy proposals.

The power of institutionalized learning: the uses and practices of commissions to generate policy change

This article analyses the conditions under which commissions succeed in influencing policy change. The paper tackles three questions: What do governments gain by establishing a commission? What are the tools employed by commissions in order to make their recommendations and ensure that their output will have political significance? And how do commissions influence policy outcomes? Five different types of influence are introduced and tested by focusing on the role of pension commissions in France, Sweden, and the UK.

Welfare Retrenchment as Social Justice: Pension Reform in Mexico

This article analyses critically the applicability of current theories of welfare state retrenchment to the 2004 public pension reform in Mexico, with the 1995 reform acting as a complementary case. In particular, this article contributes to the literature by analysing the reasons for which a potentially unpopular reform was successfully enacted. Available evidence suggests that - contrary to the existing literatures assertions - Mexican politicians responsible for the 2004 reform sought credit for these changes, rather than to avoid blame. Also, by presenting the reform as necessary to enhance socioeconomic equality, politicians were able to gather substantial popular support and defeat labour unions opposing this pension restructuring process. Hence, we propose that by framing the public debate as a matter of social justice, promoters of pension reform increased significantly popular support for the retrenchment of important benefits from a core group of civil servants, and successfully pressured Congress to promulgate this reform. We suggest that this created a reform path that will facilitate future efforts at reforming the remaining public pension schemes in Mexico.

Does it Matter Who Works at the Center? A Comparative Policy Analysis of Executive Styles

Abstract This article develops the concept of executive style to explore how variations in the relationships between politicians, career civil servants, and political appointees affect the types of policy outputs. A comparative analysis of home care policies in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia finds that the former’s civil service executive style – where professional civil servants work in close partnership with politicians in all phases of the policy process – led to the development of an innovative home care program with a long-term vision, whereas the latter’s politicized executive style – where politicians marginalize the role of civil servants in favor of political appointees – led to frequent changes in policy largely driven by short-term considerations.

From quacks to professionals: the importance of changing social constructions in the policy-making process

The social construction of target populations (SCTP) approach assumes that policies are constructed to benefit (or punish) specific groups of citizens based on their relative power and social construction. This contribution tackles one of the most sustained critiques of the SCTP literature, namely, how a group can alter its social construction and power. Stated differently, how does a group move from being constructed as dependent or deviant to contenders or advantaged? In 1991, the government in Ontario, Canada, proclaimed what is arguably the most progressive midwifery legislation in the world. The Midwifery Act established midwifery as a self-regulating profession, fully integrated into the provinces public health insurance system, and enables midwives to catch babies in hospitals, homes and birthing centres. What is striking about the legislation is the contentious debate preceding it, in which midwives were constructed as ‘quacks’, incompetent and unclean, compared to professional physicians. In this paper, we explore the role of commissions of inquiries (COI) in shifting social constructions. Specifically, we argue that COI legitimised the authoritative knowledge of moral entrepreneurs and facilitated the necessary interaction between moral and political entrepreneurs, which in turn reconstructed midwives from ‘quacks’ to experts, and resulted in significant policy change.

Precarity in Late Life: Understanding new forms of risk and insecurity

Population aging and longevity in the context of declining social commitments, raises concerns about disadvantage and widening inequality in late life. This paper explores the concept of precarity as a means to understand new and sustained forms of risk and insecurity that affect late life. The article begins with a review of the definition and uses of precarity in a range of scholarly fields including social gerontology. It then draws on illustrations from three locations of experience including older women, aging with a disability, and the foreign-born, to outline how precarity renders visible the disadvantages carried into late life, and new insecurities that emerge at the moment of needing care in the context of austerity. The argument being put forward is that precarity can be used to illustrate how risks and insecurities, experienced over time, in longevity, and the context of austerity, can deepen disadvantage. This lens thus holds the potential to challenge individual interpretations of risk, and situate experiences of disadvantage in the economic and political context. We conclude that contemporary conditions of austerity and longevity intersect to produce and sustain risk and disadvantage into late life.

Squeezing social partners to embrace reforms: The case of private earnings-related pension schemes

How do changes to public schemes and ongoing economic difficulties impact private earnings-related pension schemes (PERPS) governed by social partners? The decreasing generosity of public schemes does put strong pressure onto social partners to improve their PERPS; however, PERPS face challenges of their own related to their integration within the pension system and their financing mechanisms. Based on a comparative analysis of Finland, France, the Netherlands and Sweden, this contribution demonstrates that PERPS have all enacted measures to reduce the generosity of their scheme. Yet, the emerging policy measures responding to these challenges are quite different and depend on the previous public/private mix and the financial structure behind their PERPS.

Orienting the Public-Private Mix of Pensions

The history of pension policies is particularly interesting when it comes to the public-private mix. Originally, most states sought to encourage the establishment of voluntary pension plans while supporting some forms of pension schemes for their own employees. When private solutions failed to extend coverage and benefits to most citizens, states began to take more proactive stances. This intervention into the field of pensions increased substantially in the aftermath of the economic crisis of 1929 and World War II. Today, the ability of the state to act as the key provider of welfare benefits is being questioned in most industrialized countries, resulting in an increasing involvement of the private sector. In the field of pensions, the encroachment of the private sector is increasingly a reality. Numerous countries have extended the role of private pensions to compensate for the diminishing function of public pensions. Other countries have strengthened already potent private measures to encourage citizens to save more for their retirement income.

Introduction: Adapting Public Policies for an Ageing Society

Population ageing is one of the most fundamental developments our societies are experiencing. In 1960 the average man in the OECD worked 50 years with a life expectancy of 68 years. Thus, 74 per cent of his life was devoted to work. By 2000, only 50 per cent of an average man’s life was devoted to the labour market (OECD 2000: 14–17). Within the European Union, the ratio of people over 64 to the working age population (20–64) may very well double in the course of the next 50 years from 26.7 per cent (2000) to 53.4 per cent (2050) (EPC 2000: 32). The combination of an ageing population, generous state commitments to public benefits, and slower economic growth is causing the welfare state to be in a condition of ‘‘permanent austerity’’ (Pierson 1998). The rising costs of age-related programmes are also problematic in the context of international developments that constrain public finance such as economic and financial internationalization and, for EMU countries, the tight Maastricht convergence criteria. Therefore, the reform of age-related policies ranks high on the political agendas of almost all advanced industrial democracies. At the same

Unions and Pension Reforms in Mexico: The Impact of Democratic Governance

Abstract In the fall of2004, the Mexican Congress promulgated an important piece of legislation, which reformed the pension system of the employees of the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS). As a result of these changes, from August 2004, new IMSS employees will be enrolled into a mandatory contributive private pension plan. This retirement benefits package is largely based upon the existing pension scheme for private sector workers, which stemmed from an extensive reform crafted in 1995 and which also targeted the IMSS. This legislation is important since it is the first to tackle civil servants, whose benefits have been far more generous than other types of employees. It is noteworthy that, in both cases of IMSS reform, Mexican labour unions were unsuccessful in their efforts to stop or significantly water down these processes of social security reform.