The internal dynamics and politics of international organizations influence how international policy agendas are set and how effectively they are pursued. International organizations are open systems which respond and adapt to the external policy environment in order to remain relevant to global policymaking. Through an analysis of the internal politics of the World Bank and International Labour Organization, the leading global agenda-setters for pension reform, this article shows that internal political battles and restructuring have a decisive influence on global pensions policy. Appointment of key personnel and internal reorganization can help make certain policy ideas prominent over others. Scholars should pay greater attention to processes of change within international organizations in order to better understand the international agenda setting process.

Gender differences in the accumulation of pension savings are well documented. Work in this field has concluded that while differing lifetime work profiles (and family history) explained much of the difference, other factors such as pension knowledge and confidence in decision-making, may also be significant. This research, commissioned by the Fawcett Society and funded by Scottish Widows, explores some of these factors through the use of 30 semi-structured interviews and a focus group with women (aged 24-39) about their attitudes and motivations towards pension saving. It concentrates on discussions around pension knowledge, advice and decision-making, and identifies challenges in relation to women's pension knowledge and the use of male 'role models' in making decisions. The article then explores potential policy mechanisms to enhance women's pension saving for retirement, including the manner in which information and advice is provided and strategies to improve confidence in pension decision-making.

The United Kingdom’s (UK) withdrawal from the European Union (EU) will reshape the geography of European finance. From January 2021, the UK will no longer be able to sell financial services cross-border into the EU’s Single Market as it has done as a Member State. Through what are called passporting rights, these financial services exports from London to the EU have been central to London’s competitiveness as an international financial centre and the wider importance of financial services in the UK’s political economy. They have also provided a range of financial services to businesses and individuals in Europe. In this commentary, we examine the implications of Brexit for the financial services sector and for conceptual understandings of finance in economic geography and cognate social sciences. We argue that at the European scale, Brexit is giving rise to growing fragmentation of financial services to a range of European financial centres. Meanwhile, within the UK, finance is likely to become more concentrated in London as renewed processes of spatial concentration that have characterised previous economic shocks develop. Our analysis shows that that in order to understand these seemingly diverging geographies it is necessary to understand financial services as both economic and political practices.

There has been concern about younger people, and women in particular, not saving enough for retirement and how to encourage further saving. Therefore, this study, part-funded by the Fawcett Society in association with Scottish Widows, explores female millennials' attitudes and motivations towards pension saving and auto-enrolment through the use of 40 semi-structured interviews and a focus group. The findings show that while the introduction of auto-enrolment pensions is generally positively received, pensions knowledge is still limited and this intensifies the risk of under-saving for retirement among millennial women, particularly given women's diverse work histories.

No abstract

This paper analyses the process of policy learning that has taken place inside the Social Protection and Labor Department of the World Bank after the large‐scale abandonment of its flagship pension programme. It draws on a set of elite interviews with present and former senior policy actors at the World Bank, alongside other key transnational actors to assess the Bank's response. It utilises the policy learning literature, in particular Hall's (1993) policy paradigm approach, to analyse the scope of learning that has been undertaken. The analysis shows that policy learning is a central activity within the Social Protection and Labor Department. From the moment the World Bank entered the pensions field in 1994, it continually updated its policy advice as a result of ‘rational updating’ (Blyth, 2013) or first and second order change (Hall, 1993). However, after the global economic crisis, the dominance of the Bank in the field waned, which opened it up to new ideas and rival paradigms. This has led to a policy conversion at the World Bank. Whilst not fully abandoning its pension model from the 1990s, it now emphasises the role of public pensions and poverty relief with less of a focus on funding and sustainability. The paper argues this change borders on paradigmatic change at the Bank. It has led to a closer working relationship with the International Labour Organization as both organizations focus on the issue of pensions coverage.

The chapter on international organizations (IOs) and the global social governance of pensions analyzes the way in which IOs have competed to shape the pensions discourse. It shows how the organizational field has been shaped by the dominant economic paradigm, which has created space for IOs to operate in the policy area. A paradigmatic change creates the environmental conditions for new IOs to enter the field and compete or cooperate with the existing IOs to shape the discourse. The intrinsic features of each IO operating in the pension reform arena will be shown to determine their approach to influencing the pensions discourse and how they respond to rivals entering the field.

No abstract