The Unexpected Return of the State in Liberal Pension Systems

Most comparative research on welfare state adaption suggests a policy system's institutional infrastructure will determine to a significant extent its reform path in the face of exogenous structural challenges. Scholarship of this type has focussed primarily during the last two decades on continental Europe and its conservative and social democratic welfare states (eg Palier 2010). Efforts have been made first to explain stasis and then to conceptualise and theorise path departures (eg Streeck/Thelen 2005; Häusermann 2010). The reform path in liberal welfare capitalism, including the UK and Ireland, was anticipated as being more straightforward, with welfare states immediately vulnerable to retrenchment. Yet, empirically, a strengthening of state provision and regulation has been noted in some of these systems, particularly with respect to pensions (Meyer/Bridgen 2012; Lain et al 2012).

This paper confirms a strengthening of the state’s role in most liberal pension systems in recent years. It argues that these developments can be explained only if greater attention is paid to non-state provision as a source of political dynamism. Regime theory is deficient in this respect because, while it recognises the state’s role in stimulating and regulating the market in liberal systems, it has failed to draw out the social and political forces at its root. Cross-class expectations of shared, rather than individual, responsibility for pensions above the basic minimum standard persist, the paper suggests, which serve to mitigate broader retrenchment pressures.