Narrative stories, institutional rules, and the politics of pension policy in Canada and the United States

Abstract

Deborah Stone's Policy Paradox stresses the role of narrative stories in the construction of policy problems. This article takes a critical look at the Policy Paradox and at the claim that paying close attention to narratives is essential to the analysis of policy change. Drawing on recent scholarship on the role of ideas in public policy, the article shows that the analysis of narratives is part of a broader intellectual project associated with the ideational turn in policy analysis. The article explains how the analysis of narrative stories should take institutional factors into account, which can shape policy decisions. To illustrate these theoretical claims, the article analyzes the debate over public pension reform in the United States and Canada during the last 25 years. More specifically, the article compares the reform of the Canada Pension Plan during the mid-1990s and the failed push to privatize US Social Security during the Bill Clinton and the George W. Bush presidencies. The analysis stresses that, while narrative stories shape problem definition, institutional legacies influence policy adoption.

Reform narratives and argumentative coupling in German pension policy: constructing the ‘deserving retiree’

“…Those main features were basically kept until the new millennium (Bridgen & Meyer, 2014). Similar to other countries (Béland, 2019;Hagelund & Grødem, 2019, both in this Special Issue), however, during the 1990s Germany's public pension system came increasingly under reform pressure in face of population ageing, high unemployment rates, and the financial burden of reunification. Germany's first governing coalition of Social democrats (SPD) and Green party (1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005), in a broader party consensus (Friedrich, 2015), then initiated a path of social policy and pension policy reform, which has been rated as paradigmatic (Lamping & Rüb, 2004;Schmähl, 2011): In essence, the changes involved a public-private shift, by which public pensions were cut back and the legal retirement age 6 successively raised, while private provision (with the so-called Riester-pension 7 ) was stipulated and publicly subsidized.…”

Narrative plots for regulatory, distributive, and redistributive policies

“…When compared to regulatory policies, studies using the NPF to investigate distributive and redistributive policies are—to the best of our knowledge—less widespread. Yet, especially in recent years, analyses of narratives in redistributive policies have gained traction (see, e.g., Béland, 2019; Blum & Kuhlmann, 2019). In redistributive policies, the policy‐specific element of the plot focuses again on the concrete actions and is essentially concerned with “giving” or “taking” certain benefits.…”

Bringing Back the State: Understanding Varieties of Pension Re-reforms in Latin America

“…All things being equal, we would expect a poorer country to focus on noncontributory pensions exclusively to provide a basic income for all and rapidly to increase pensioner coverage (Arenas de Mesa 2019). Meanwhile, wealthier countries and countries with a larger ageing population are expected to maintain or even expand the role of private pensions so as to relieve pressure on state finances (Béland 2019). While the introduction of Renta Dignidad in Bolivia goes in the direction of expanding noncontributory pensions, the 2010 re-reform maintained individual pension accounts.…”