On a given symplectic manifold, there are many symplectic connections, i.e. torsion free connections w.r.t. which the symplectic form is parallel. We call such a connection special if it is either the Levi-Civita connection of a Bochner-Kähler metric of arbitrary signature, a Bochner-bi-Lagrangian connection, a connection of Ricci type or a connection with special symplectic holonomy. We link these special connections to parabolic contact geometry, showing that the symplectic reduction of (an open cell of) a parabolic contact manifold by a symmetry vector field is special symplectic in a canonical way. Moreover, we show that any special symplectic manifold or orbifold is locally equivalent to one of these symplectic reductions. As a consequence, we are able to prove a number of rigidity results and other global prop-erties
