Politics and ideas in policymaking: The reform of the Uruguayan pension system in comparative perspective

This dissertation shows the effect of specialized social knowledge on pension systems reforms. Economic and political structural variables largely determine policy changes, but specialized social knowledge determine the direction and depth of a given policy change. Policy advisors and interest groups with specialized social knowledge fight for ideas that provide meaning to policies and policy actions making them viable (or not) independent of the economic system or the political regime.; Most of the analyses on the politics of pension reform are based upon theories that stress the importance of political regime, economic crisis, international pressures and pension system structural problems. While these theories have provided us with useful insights for the understanding of a set of independent variables that determine policy change, they are insufficient for the understanding of policy choices.; This dissertation shows that two countries, Chile and Uruguay, both facing similar pension system problems and with similar authoritarian neoliberal regimes adopted different policies almost at the same time. Uruguay followed a statist reform informed by ideas coming from traditional international pension institutions, while Chile, in the midst of "market revolution" created a private system with individual accounts.; After democracy was restored in these two countries, different actors agreed about the existence of a deep crisis affecting the pension system. Over a period of ten years successive governments attempted to introduce different kinds of non-structural pension system reforms but each of them failed. Paradoxically, in 1995 in Uruguay a structural reform with a capitalization pillar was introduced, in marked contrast to what could have been expected in light of the unsuccessful milder reform attempts.; The answer to the puzzle of similar problems, different solutions is that policy and political ideas are learned and that structural variables only set the conditions for a change but the direction of policy change depends upon the availability of specialized social knowledge and the existence of conditions for policy and political learning.