Defined Contribution: Amphibious Policy Entrepreneurs and the Silent Revolution of Pension Financialization

Key theme seminar - The transformations of capitalism

Sciences Po, 1 Place Saint-Thomas d'Aquin, 75007 Paris 

Comparative political economy (CPE) literature conventionally assumes that major – economic or social – policy reforms are driven either by parties or by producer groups. In fact, it has been increasingly split between approaches emphasizing electoral politics versus producer group politics. With its strong structuralist underpinnings, CPE has been reluctant to pay attention to policy entrepreneurs whose transformational role has been very frequently highlighted by students of public policy. This project attempts to bridge these different strands of literature by drawing attention to the transformational role of “amphibious” policy entrepreneurs, i.e. individuals who have been structurally more likely to be influential in multi-dimensional policy areas because of their concurrent work for different types of collective actors (e.g. a political party, an interest group and a bureaucracy) embedded in separate institutional arenas. Empirically, the project focuses on the politics leading to the expansion of private defined-contribution retirement accounts in North America and Western Europe since the 1970s. I argue that, in the multidimensional area of private retirement accounts (which can simultaneously be a social policy, financial regulation, tax policy and electoral issue) involving a multitude of stakeholders (political parties, producer groups and bureaucracies) whose preferences may be at odds with each other, amphibious policy entrepreneurs have had a major comparative advantage both in identifying new institutional designs that would help address challenges faced by relevant stakeholders and in co-opting those relevant stakeholders into broader coalitions for reform.

Speaker

Marekt Naczyk, Oxford University

Chair

Cyril Benoît, Sciences Po, CEE, CNRS

Information: matthias.thiemann@sciencespo.fr