Congratulations to Dr. Jan Boguslawski who defended his PhD thesis "(De)financializing the welfare state. Evidence from Poland" on Monday, June 23rd.

His dissertation, supervised by Bruno Palier, investigates the interplay between welfare state structures and financial markets in Poland through a comparative analysis of pension and housing policies from 1989 to 2020. It examines how external constraints, elite strategies, and public salience interact to produce lasting policy outcomes.

The core empirical question concerns the divergence in financialization trajectories across pensions and housing. In both domains, financialization was initially embraced in the 1990s, but its longterm entrenchment varied. In pensions, the capitalized second pillar (OFE) was ultimately rolled back. In housing, financialization, underpinned by mortgage finance, became durably entrenched.

Three findings emerge. First, divergent outcomes stem from a 1990s critical juncture. Housing privatization, a one-off fiscal and political fix, created a hard lock-in by exhausting preexisting provision structures and forging a new ‘individualized’ social contract. In pensions, financialized elements were layered atop still-central state provision, yielding few returns for policymakers. The fiscal burden from capitalization made reversal during the post-GFC period politically and economically attractive. 

Second, trajectories were shaped by the uneven emergence of financial actors’ structural power. Housing finance institutions, especially banks, became infrastructural to the housing model. OFEs were expendable once they ceased serving elite goals, particularly after the failure of private pension markets in the 2008 crisis.

Third, the study challenges assumptions about externally imposed financialization. In both domains, domestic elites and producer groups—‘supply-side’ actors—used available tools to pursue strategic aims. Domestic agency, not transnational pressure, drove outcomes.

His PhD jury was composed of Anke Hassel (Hertie School), Kristin Makszin (Universiteit Leiden), Bruno Palier (CNRS, thesis supervisor), Matthias Thiemann (Sciences Po) and Sarah Wilson Sokhey (University of Colorado Boulder).

Jan Boguslwaski was jointly affiliated to the CEE and MaxPo - the Max Planck Sciences Po Center On Coping with Instability in Market Societies  (now AxPo). During the course of his PhD, he has also been a visiting doctoral researcher at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford and a ReThink.CEE Fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (class of 2023).