Transnational actors and the politics of pension reform in Sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACT Drawing on recent scholarship on transnational actors and on the role of ideas in policy change, this paper analyzes the regional context of the pension reform debate in Sub-Saharan Africa, and shows that, at least since the 1980s, there was significant attention to pension reforms in Africa by global policy actors, including the World Bank. However, unlike in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe, where the World Bank proved dominant, the regional environment of pension reform in Sub-Saharan Africa was characterized by a fierce competition between the World Bank and the International Labour Organization (ILO), with each institution promoting different policy preferences. As demonstrated, in Sub-Saharan Africa pension reform, the ILO has proved more influential than the World Bank. Theoretically, the paper stresses the role of transnational actors in the global diffusion of social policy ideas. Recognizing the need to explore the interactions between national and transnational actors, as well as between transnational actors themselves, the analysis explores the dialogical and competitive nature of the global politics of ideas.