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The Politics of Pension Reform in Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2002

CARMELO MESA-LAGO  and
KATHARINA MÜLLER
CARMELO MESA-LAGO
Affiliation:
Carmelo Mesa-Lago is Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Economics and Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, and Professor at the Department of International Relations, Florida International University. Katharina Müller is a researcher at the German Development Institute, Bonn, Germany.
KATHARINA MÜLLER
Affiliation:
Carmelo Mesa-Lago is Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Economics and Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, and Professor at the Department of International Relations, Florida International University. Katharina Müller is a researcher at the German Development Institute, Bonn, Germany.
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Abstract

Latin America has been a world pioneer of neoliberal, structural reform of social security pensions (‘privatisation’). This article focuses on the diverse political economy circumstances that enabled such reform, analysing why policy makers have chosen such a costly strategy and how they have managed to implement it. First, in nine countries with diverse regimes (authoritarian and democratic) it examines the internal political process that led to the adoption of reform. There tends to be an inverse relationship between the degree of democratisation and that of privatisation, but the political regime alone cannot fully explain the reform outcomes in all cases. To expand the search for explanatory variables, other key factors that might have influenced the reform design are studied, among them relevant political actors (driving and opposing forces), existing institutional arrangements, legal constraints, internal and external economics and policy legacy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , August 2002 , pp. 687 - 715
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

K. Müller gratefully acknowledges funding by the Volkswagen Foundation for her ongoing research project ‘The Political Economy of Pension Reform: Eastern Europe and Latin America in Comparison’. C. Mesa-Lago appreciated comments by Veronica Montecinos on an earlier version.