The authoritarian welfare state and the historical emergence of old-age pensions around the world

Abstract

This cumulative dissertation analyzes the historical and global emergence of old-age pension programs from a political regime perspective by paying particular attention to nondemocratic regimes. The cumulative dissertation consists of three single-authored articles. The first article introduces a new and self-compiled dataset on old-age pension programs entitled PENLEG and maps global pension patterns. Moreover, case-based evidence is used to explain different pension trajectories. The second article focuses on pension design preferences from a political regime perspective. It argues that nondemocratic regimes should be more likely than democratic regimes to opt for a social insurance design, as these pension designs are best suited to bind citizens to the state and to target pension benefits on those groups that are essential for regime survival. The article findings strong evidence for this assumption. The third article analyzes political regime differences in pension coverage and benefit generosity rates of the first pension programs. It shows that democratic regimes had significantly higher pension coverage rates than nondemocratic regimes. The reverse pattern can be found for benefit generosity, which was significantly higher in nondemocratic regimes. In sum, the dissertation highlights the importance of studying different dimensions of welfare programs to derive a comprehensive understanding of welfare policies from a political regime perspective.