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Sustainable and adequate old age pensions in ageing societies have become a major topic on the political agenda. This book describes the shift from public to private pensions and explains the differences across ten European countries.

Path dependence as a concept in institutional theories has become increasingly popular in economics and other social sciences. The key idea is that in a sequence of events, the latter events are not (completely) independent from those that occurred in the past. Yet, common usage of the concept often subsumes two markedly different models and approaches to understand historical sequencing. The two main processes of the past shaping the future - diffusion and developmental pathways - must be distinguished analytically. This paper juxtaposes (1) the unplanned "trodden pathʺ that takes shape through the subsequent repeated use by other individuals of that spontaneously chosen path, and (2) the "branching pathwaysʺ or juncture at which one of the available alternative pathways must be chosen in order to continue a journey. Furthermore, the typical approaches and their explanatory purchase are discussed in reference to explanations of institutional change. The paper shows that the first path dependence theorem is too deterministic and inflexible, whereas the second approach is sufficiently supple to analyze various forms of institutional change.

Europaweit altern die Gesellschaften: Immer weniger potenzielle Erwerbspersonen sollen die Renten von immer mehr Älteren bezahlen. Die Reformwege, die in den verschiedenen Rentensystemen eingeschlagen wurden, unterscheiden sich je nach Problemdruck und historischer Prägung.

AbstractWhile the sustainability of pension systems facing demographic ageing has been widely discussed, the adequacy of retirement income has often been neglected in current debate. However, considerable poverty and income inequality in old age exists across Europe. Using recent EU‐SILC data (2017/18), the comparative analysis of poverty rates and income inequality in old age shows important cross‐national variations that need to be seen in context of market‐related inequalities but also the specific pension system. Beveridge basic security is not always capable of effectively reducing poverty despite the explicit goal to do so. In addition, private funded pensions may generate social inequality. Some contributory Bismarckian systems are better suited to reduce poverty, but given their focus on status maintenance also reproduce inequality. Poverty rates are low due to encompassing basic pensions in Dutch and some Nordic multipillar systems and in core Central and Eastern European countries. Bismarckian pensions such as in Germany are generating some inequality and medium level of poverty, while France and some Southern European countries perform better on poverty but reproduce larger inequalities. Beveridge systems such as in the United Kingdom and Switzerland with rather meagre basic multipillar systems have relatively medium to high poverty risks. In addition, the Baltic countries and new EU member states in the periphery have the highest poverty rates across Europe. The analysis shows that the minimum income provision of public pension systems matters most for poverty risks, while the overall pension architecture has an impact on reproducing inequality in old age acquired during working life.

In response to the demographic challenges and fiscal constraints, many European welfare states have moved toward the privatization and marketization of pensions in order to improve their financial sustainability. The privatization of retirement income responsibility has led to a shift from dominantly public pensions to a multi‐pillar architecture with growing private pillars composed of personal, firm‐based, or collectively negotiated pension arrangements. At the same time, marketization has led to the introduction and expansion of prefunded pension savings based on financial investments as well as stronger reliance of market‐logic principles in the remaining public pay‐as‐you‐go (PAYG) pensions. However, there are also important cross‐national variations in the speed, scope, and structural outcome of the privatization and marketization of European pension systems. Liberal market economies, but also some coordinated market economies (the Netherlands and Switzerland) as well as the Nordic countries have embraced multi‐pillar strategies earlier and more widely, while the Bismarckian pensions systems and the post‐socialist transition countries of Eastern Europe have been belated converts. The recent financial market and economic crisis, however, indicates that the double transformation may entail short‐term problems and long‐term uncertainties about the social and political sustainability of these privatized and marketized multi‐pillar strategies.

In den letzten Jahren ist in der vergleichenden sozialwissenschaftlichen Forschung eine wichtige angloamerikanische Debatte über epistemologische und methodologische Fragen entstanden, zu der bekannte Soziologen wie vergleichende Politikwissenschaftler beigetragen haben. Vertreter statistischer Methoden kritisieren die qualitativen Fallanalysen der "small-N comparisons", d. h. Vergleiche mit nur wenigen Fällen. Auf diese Kritik reagierten die historisch-vergleichenden Sozialwissenschaftler, indem sie auf die Bedeutung von systematisch vergleichenden intensiven Fallstudien und auf die Schwächen extensiver quantitativer Vergleiche hingewiesen haben. In dem Beitrag werden die beiden Forschungsstrategien des internationalen Vergleichs idealtypisch gegenüber gestellt und ihre spezifischen methodischen Zugänge diskutiert. Dabei werden zunächst die Probleme quantitativer statistischer Vergleiche mit großer Fallzahl erörtert, die in solchen Analysen of unterbelichtet bleiben und von Verfechtern dieser Methode verschwiegen werden. Im zweiten Schritt steht dann der qualitative Vergleich im Vordergrund der Methodenkritik und dabei soll auch hier ungerechtfertigte Kritik aus dem Weg geräumt werden. (ICB2)