International Transfers and National Path Dependencies: Pension Systems in Britain and Germany after the Second World War

Abstract

AbstractExternal influences have always played an important role in British and German pension politics. Until the 1970s, bilateral interdependencies in the form of knowledge transfers were paramount. Later, transnational developments transcending Britain and Germany such as the evolving discourse about demographic aging have shaped pension reform debates in both countries. Neither the short-lived British experiment with earnings-related pensions in the 1970s nor the German move towards the privatisation of old-age provision in recent years can be explained without referring to external influences. The effect of international impulses, however, should not be overstated. Even the profound pension reforms in both countries shortly after the year 2000 did not abandon the different institutional paths by which the two pension systems had been characterised in the past.