The political economy of pension reforms in Europe under financial stress

Abstract Despite a substantially unchanged problem load in the last 20 years, EU Member States witnessed a recent surge in pension reforms. Since the Great Recession, external market and political pressures started outcompeting national politics in pension-related decisions. Employing European Commission data on major pension reforms during 2006–2015, we find that governments respond to higher risk premia charged by international financial actors. Macro-policy fundamentals, such as budget deficits, and micro-policy indicators, such as pension spending, instead, only signal the necessity to act. They trigger the reforms in the presence of EU conditionality, that is, in the presence of Excessive Deficit Procedures and Country-Specific Recommendations within the European Semester. These findings deepen our understanding of the Europeanization of social policy, contribute to the literature on the political economy of reforms and testify to the declining role of domestic factors in the politics of the welfare state.