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Procedural tools and pension reform in the long run: the case of Sweden
[The new politics of the welfare state? A case study of extra-parliamentary party politics in Norway]

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  • Adam Hannah

Abstract

Welfare state reform is understood to be risky, difficult and still ongoing. As such, there is a need for analytic tools that can aid understanding of how governments are able to overcome the various barriers they face in seeking change, and the challenges of managing complex and hybridised welfare arrangements. This article argues that the policy tools literature provides several promising avenues for doing so. Specifically, it suggests that procedural policy tools – increasingly recognised in policy studies – are often critical for mitigating risk of blame, sustaining coalitions and supporting the ongoing adaptation of social policy systems to changing conditions and information. This is especially critical where policy innovations entail new substantive relationships between states, citizens and markets, as initial assumptions about individual and group behaviour are likely to be flawed. Procedural tools can enable learning and recalibration in the pursuit of public legitimacy for changing arrangements. To demonstrate the argument, this article engages closely with a case study of public pension reform in Sweden in the 1990s. The case study finds that, initially, reformers made use of a politically insulated parliamentary working group to design a new system, one which attempted to automate elements of policymaking and transfer risk from the state to the individual. However, this goal has proved more difficult to realise than imagined, and in the longer-term, the government used procedural tools for the purposes of learning and recalibration, and in doing so has gone some way to re-establishing modified forms of state accountability.

Suggested Citation

  • Adam Hannah, 2021. "Procedural tools and pension reform in the long run: the case of Sweden [The new politics of the welfare state? A case study of extra-parliamentary party politics in Norway]," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 40(3), pages 362-378.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:polsoc:v:40:y:2021:i:3:p:362-378.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14494035.2021.1955487
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Weaver, Kent, 2010. "Paths and Forks or Chutes and Ladders?: Negative Feedbacks and Policy Regime Change," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 30(2), pages 137-162, August.
    2. Weaver, R. Kent, 1986. "The Politics of Blame Avoidance," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6(4), pages 371-398, October.
    3. Giliberto Capano & Michael Howlett, 2020. "The Knowns and Unknowns of Policy Instrument Analysis: Policy Tools and the Current Research Agenda on Policy Mixes," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(1), pages 21582440199, January.
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    6. Hagen, Johannes, 2013. "A History of the Swedish Pension System," Working Paper Series, Center for Fiscal Studies 2013:7, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    7. Annika Sunde´n, 2006. "The Swedish Experience with Pension Reform," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 22(1), pages 133-148, Spring.
    8. McCONNELL, ALLAN, 2010. "Policy Success, Policy Failure and Grey Areas In-Between," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 30(3), pages 345-362, December.
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    11. Kent Weaver & Alexander Willén, 2014. "The Swedish pension system after twenty years: Mid-course corrections and lessons," OECD Journal on Budgeting, OECD Publishing, vol. 13(3), pages 1-26.
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    Cited by:

    1. Mehmet Akif Demircioglu & Roberto Vivona, 2021. "Positioning public procurement as a procedural tool for innovation: an empirical study [Creating the Conditions for Radical Public Service Innovation]," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 40(3), pages 379-396.

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