From Countries to Sectors: The Explanatory Power of Employees' Skills and Trade Unions' Power for Sector Differences in Occupational Pensions

Studies analyzing welfare regimes and social policy have traditionally focused on countries as units in order to show similarities and differences. In a comparative perspective, within country and sector differences have largely been neglected. However, in the course of the retreat of the state and statutory pension retrenchment, occupational welfare and levels below the nation state are increasing in importance. At the same time, employers and trade unions are fundamental for sectoral industrial relations and the organisation of work and therefore for the governance of occupational welfare like pensions. In contrast to stated convergence and dissolving regime or country differences in terms of public pensions, sector differences might persist over time. But how do occupational pensions at sectoral level look like, who is covered, who contributes and how high will be the level of benefits? This neglected issue is of high relevance since occupational pensions are expanding and become essential for country or regime classifications. As a first step, we are analysing occupational pensions in a most different system research design at country level. In a second step, we are more interested in within country differences at sector level in the selected countries. Approaches usually used for cross-country analyses will be applied within countries in order to explain sector differences. Building on approaches such as Varieties of Capitalism and Power Resources, we hypothesize similarities and differences at sector level across countries due to employees’ skills and the power of trade unions. We expect occupational pensions to vary across sectors in a similar way they vary across countries.