Politics and ideas in policymaking reforming pensions systems in comparative perspective: the cases of Uruguay and Chile

This paper shows the effect of specialized social knowledge on pension system reform. Economic and political structural variables largely determine policy changes, but specialized social knowledge determine the direction and depth of a given policy change. Policy advisors and interest groups with specialized social knowledge fight for ideas that provide meaning to policies and policy actions making tham viable (or not) independent of the economic system or the political regime. Most of the analyses on the politics of pension reform are based upon thoeries that stress the importance of political regime, economic crisis, international pressures and pension system strucutral problems. While these theories have provided us with useful insigths for the understanding of a set of independent variables that determine policy change, they are insufficient for the understanding of policy choices. This paper shows that two countries, Chile and Uruguay, both facing similar pension system problems and with similar authoritarian neliberal regimes adopted different policies almost at the same time. Uruguay followed a statist reform informed by ideas coming from traditional international pension institutions, while Chile, in the midst of a "market revolution" created a private system with individual accounts. The answer to the puzzle of similar problems, different solutions is that policy and political ideas are learned and that structural variables only set the conditions for a change but tha direction of policy change depends upon the availability of specialized social knowledge and the existence of conditions for policy and political learning.