Between state and market : The changing role of institutions and political actors in East European pension reforms

How did pension systems in CEE changed over the past decades? What explains the variation in reform choices between political regimes in the region? Why some countries have chosen to introduce mandatory private accounts whereas others have opted only for parametric reforms? This dissertation answers these questions arguing that the compromises forged between national elites and international actors around key institutional elements of pension systems explain the growing diversity in welfare state pathways in CEE. In particular, it shows that whereas International Financial Institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank have prioritized parametric adjustments aimed at ensuring the long-term fiscal sustainability of public pension systems together with an agenda of privatization, national elites promoted reforms that focused predominantly on short-term goals. Furthermore, it argues that, an analysis of the wider group of CEE countries over a time–span that includes both the expansion and the contraction phases of the mandatory funded pillars in the region, shows that, on average, the more authoritarian countries were less likely to privatize their pension systems. It shows that the type of the regime that emerged during transition has impacted the responsiveness of national elites to the agenda of pension reform promoted by IFIs as well as the political sustainability of pension reforms. In particular, in the case of authoritarian countries, the choice of pension reforms was linked to the importance of pensioner constituencies for the survival of the regime. In contrast, in more democratic regimes, pension reforms were carried out by taking into account the interests of different societal groups, and depended on the political compromises that were forged between policy makers and societal constituents. Still, a commonality between pension policy-making in authoritarian and non-authoritarian regimes was that ultimately national executives could pursue an agenda of reforms that was disconnected from the interests of societal stakeholders. Thus oftentimes, the interests of trade unions or pensioner associations were sidelined when passing pension reforms

Decentralization, Union Power and Contention Episodes: the Case of Dacia Workers

In this article we investigate a case of successful union organizing in one automotive plant in Romania. We argue that in order to be able to explain why the union succeeds in defending workers’ rights we need to consider both the structural and the agency dimensions that condition labor’s capacity to effectively organize. We find that unions still organize at the plant level and do so effectively when they adopt an adversarial stance towards management. Our analysis of the case of the Dacia plant in Romania shows that the union there has made use of a diverse repertoire of protest activities in order to push for its demands. While striking proved to be a winning strategy for the union in the recent years, we also find that it is a strategy that is used less and less because of the shifting economic and political environment in which the plant is embedded

Employment protection and collective bargaining during the Great Recession: A comprehensive review of international evidence

In this article, we present information from a unique database of labour market reforms implemented in 111 developed and developing countries between 2008 and 2014. We show that the number of reforms implemented each year has gradually increased and that the majority of reforms were passed in advanced economies – with EU member states being particularly active reformers. Moreover, the results show that permanent contracts and collective bargaining were the most popular areas of policy intervention in the labour market domain and that the majority of reforms decreased the strictness of employment protection legislation – although large disparities emerge across world regions in this respect. Finally, the paper compares our database to different indicators of employment regulation in order to check the consistency of our results

From austerity to austerity : the political economy of public pension reforms in Romania and Bulgaria

This article discusses the trajectories of pension system reforms in two of the latecomers to the EU: Bulgaria and Romania. It finds that over the past two decades, the two countries pursued increasingly dissimilar public pension reforms for managing their respective public pay-as-you-go pension systems. Using a political institutionalist theoretical framework, I argue that the divergence between the two cases is attributable to multiple factors. First, different temporary political compromises between national and international actors generated reforms that retrenched public pensions and introduced mandatory private accounts. Second, pension reforms often had unintended consequences that limited their intended impact. Third, incremental adjustments introduced by governments in response to political pressures caused alternating phases of austerity and generosity that catered to different constituencies in each country. In Romania, reform outcomes amounted to a moderately generous pension system, financed through relatively high contribution rates with a small funded component, while in the case of Bulgaria, the pension system evolved into a meagre programme, financed through low contribution rates and a larger private pillar

Welfare State Development in Central and Eastern Europe : A State of the Art Literature Review

The welfare states in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have undergone massive changes since the beginning of the 1990s. This paper reviews the literature on welfare state development in CEE in light of the theories that have been used to study advanced capitalist democracies. Its purpose is to critically assess the extent to which different theories can explain changes in the welfare state during and after transition. It argues that until now two strands of literature have crystallised: institutionalism and actor-centred explanations. Institutionalists agree that welfare reforms are limited by the path dependence of the national welfare state structures though this framework is biased towards explaining stability. Recent literature seeks to overcome this bias by adding variables that traditionally belong to the actor-centred paradigm. This essay will argue that the gains from such an approach are exceeded by losses in the accuracy and parsimony of explanations. Further, in the actor-centred camp the welfare state is seen as a product of bargaining between various national and international actors. Yet the debate about who is responsible for the present welfare state arrangements is far from over. Unanswered questions revolve around the impact of political parties and ideologies on welfare reforms, the role of bureaucracies, the efficiency of international financial institutions in advocating retrenchment and the precise mechanisms through which all the above actors defend their interests

Negotiating agency and structure : trade union organizing strategies in a hostile environment

This article investigates a case of successful union organizing in one automotive assembly plant in Romania. The authors argue that in order to explain why the union succeeds in defending workers’ rights there is a need to consider both structural and agency aspects that condition labor’s capacity to effectively defend their interests. The findings show that the union at the Romanian plant has made use of a diverse repertoire of protest activities in order to defend its worker constituency. The authors also discuss why as of late protests are less and less used by the union in response to the shifting economic and political environment in which the plant is embedded. They argue that a closer look at the strategy of the Romanian union and the path it has taken in the past decade provides a better understanding of the conditions for union success in an economic, legal, and political environment that has become increasingly hostile toward organized labor. In this sense, the article points to the more general situation unions in Central and Eastern Europe have found themselves in recent years