The liberal welfare state and the politics of pension reform: a comparative analysis of Canada and the United Kingdom

The provision of state pensions in the advanced countries faces two significant and reinforcing challenges. Demographic change and global economic pressure impact the provision of public pensions by increasing social spending and depending on the method of financing, the base of government’s revenues from which these programmes are funded. Countries belonging to the liberal welfare model, such as the UK and Canada, hold a common view on the primacy of the market and actively adapt measures that keep social benefits modest. Yet the reforms adopted by the UK and Canadian government reveal divergence. This presents a puzzle as the welfare state literature predicts convergence. Canada with its small domestic market and open economy has greater exposure to risks of globalisation than the UK, but it is the UK and not Canada that adopted the more radical reforms. To explain this puzzle, this thesis examines four cases: two different pensions’ schemes in each of the two countries – Canada and the UK. The thesis argues that the concentration of political authority is central to explaining the variation, although not the sole factor