Introduction: Public and Private?

Since the late 1970s, the rise of neoliberalism has intensified the traditional debate over the relationship between public and private social policy (Esping-Andersen 2002: 4). 1 Based on the idea that markets are more efficient than states at distributing resources and regulating the economy, neoliberalism promotes the application of market solutions to social policy issues (Campbell and Pedersen 2001; Harvey 2005). Although a number of neoliberal privatization efforts have failed due to intense political opposition (Pierson 1994), the idea of a growing reliance on private benefits has gained traction in this era of economic globalization and fiscal austerity (Gilbert 2002). Beyond national parties and politicians, think tanks and international organizations have actively promoted neoliberalism and, more specifically, social policy privatization. In 1994, for example, the World Bank issued a widely debated report on pension reform entitled Averting the Old Age Crisis. Through this report, the World Bank directed policymakers to reduce the state’s role in order to make more room for private efforts (World Bank 1994). Beyond spectacular neoliberal statements such as this 1994 World Bank report, market liberalism is the dominant economic creed in most advanced industrial societies. Many states have promoted the development of private social policies to offset cutbacks in—or to prevent the expansion of—public provisions (Shalev 1996). These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.