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Book Review: Ageing and Pension Reform Around the World: Evidence from Eleven Countries

Pension reform is a saturated topic in the welfare-state literature. Each year brings numerous publications aiming to further our understanding of the pension crisis and the politics of recasting old-age programmes. Among political scientists, since the path-breaking work of Pierson on the ‘new politics of welfare’, many authors have contributed to analysis of the challenges to, and reforms of, one of the ‘stickiest’ institutions of the national state. In this crowded field, any attempt to say something original about both pension politics and policy seems quite courageous. Despite that risk, this book should be regarded as a success. Adopting a traditional new institutionalist approach, the work is extremely homogeneous and provides interesting novelties for experts and newcomers to the ‘pension world’. As any ‘big n’ comparative study should, the book proposes a clear and simple (though not simplicistic) theoretical framework. The basic argument is that pension programmes across the world face common challenges such as population ageing, and that policymakers aim to improve their long-term sustainability, in terms of both financial viability and social adequacy. The way these systems react depends on two main variables: first, the ‘speed’ at which population ageing takes place; secondly, the institutional architecture of pension programmes. As Bonoli and Shinkawa argue in the first chapter, the combination of these two factors largely explains the ‘observed variation in patterns of pension politics and policy-making’. The first novelty of the book is the comparison of the reform process implemented in recent decades not only in Europe and North America, but also and more unusually in East Asia. This broad comparison is quite successful in avoiding the risk of provincialism, ever present where empirical evidence is more restricted. It allows the authors to convincingly show the differing intensity of risks related to ageing in different regions of the world, with the riskiest trends being in East Asia. Surprisingly, from a more theoretical point of view, reforms in Japan, Korea and Taiwan can also be analysed using conceptual tools originally developed for Western countries. The second innovative aspect of the book is its dynamic interpretation of path-dependency. The analyses provided in the individual contributions – and particularly those of continental European countries – move beyond the notion that pension systems are ‘frozen landscapes’, as EspingAndersen first suggested and much research has subsequently asserted. This book shows that pension reform is difficult, but not impossible. While this argument is not entirely new, many chapters here give interesting and promising insights for more precise assessments of reform outcomes. A final potential innovation is related to the classification of pension systems. Based on previous efforts by Bonoli, the book restates the distinction between ‘social insurance’ and ‘multi-pillar systems’, but augments it with a ‘Bismarckian lite’ model, typical of North America and Japan, and an ‘incomplete’ model, represented by Taiwan. From this perspective, it is possible to see how the protracted reforms in a country like Sweden in the 1990s actually change its pension profile. To sum up, the book is a good basic introduction to pension politics, but also an interesting and stimulating contribution for more established scholars seeking deeper understanding of present and future dynamics in this policy area.