| Pension reform is one of the most economically pressing and politically controversial issues worldwide. This study focuses on the variation in the outcome of pension reform in Central and Eastern Europe. As they navigate the processes of privatization and marketization, post-communist states have experienced a distinctive version of the larger crisis of the modern welfare state. The diversity of pension reform results across the region is puzzling given the relative similarity of economic constraints.;I use as a starting point the theoretical contributions developed and tested in the West regarding the "new politics" of the welfare state, but I depart from them in important respects. First, unlike an important strand in the literature, which stresses the economic and international pressures for reform, my dissertation focuses on its political feasibility. It emphasizes the role of political institutions, and in particular of the party system and the process of coalition formation, in the outcome. Second, distinct from the accounts that focus exclusively on the role of ideology in explaining political parties' positions towards pension reform, I argue that, in addition to their ideological orientation, parties are subject to a whole array of other constraints, such as keeping internal cohesion, satisfying the demands of their constituents, and forming alliances with other parties. The strategies that parties adopt in order to maximize competing goals represent the main determinant of policy output.;I test my argument concerning the role of political parties and coalitional politics using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. A cross-national comparative analysis of Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia provides empirical evidence of the hypothesized relationship between certain configurations of the party system and specific reform results. In addition, I utilize roll call analyses of voting in the Hungarian, Polish, and Slovak legislatures to provide a more precise estimation of policy dimensions, parties' spatial positions, legislators' ideal points, and the formation of pro and anti-pension reform coalitions. While this theoretical argument has been developed based on experiences of Central and Eastern European countries, it is useful for the analysis of pension reform beyond the post-communist setting. |
