Between substantive and symbolic influence: diffusion, translation and bricolage in German pension politics

Abstract

Diffusion, transfer and translation literatures assume that policy ideas are conceived exogenously, while domestic perspectives such as bricolage consider policy innovations as reactivated local ideas. Cases where foreign ideas do not shape local actors’ preferences, but still feature saliently in public discourse therefore appear in a conceptual blind spot. The paper develops a distinction between the symbolic and substantive functions of foreign ideas. For the case of German pension politics it argues that foreign ideas can be causally consequential as (symbolic) framing devices, even if their underlying ideas had (substantively) long been conceived and advocated in the domestic context. The analysis finds that the foreign-frame ‘Anglo-American pension funds’—a most likely case for translation and diffusion—was initially employed by change agents to advance their longstanding preference for more financialized pension policies. During the ensuing political struggles, continuity agents successfully reinterpreted and utilized the same frame to prevent pension financialization and veneer continuity as the transfer of a foreign policy innovation in what is best described as label localization. Thinking of foreign ideas in substantive and symbolic terms specifies how ideas emerge and how they are used in political conflict, which bridges global and domestic perspectives on policy change.

Keywords:

• Bricolage
• translation
• diffusion
• policy transfer
• Germany
• pension financialization

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Cornel Ban, Martin B. Carstensen, Kattalina Berriochoa, Jane Gingrich, Ronen Mandelkern, David Rueda and the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on various iterations of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The charge that diffusion studies ignore the malleability of ideas has not remained uncontested (Rogers, 2003).

2 Brooks (2005), for example, finds no evidence of pension privatization diffusion among rich countries. Yet, others have been optimistic that their diffusion arguments travel to developed countries (Orenstein, 2005, p. 175; 2013, p. 260).

3 In one curious case the author makes a diffusion argument while presenting empirics that suggest domestic origins of policy development and advocacy (Ervik, 2005, pp. 45–46).

4 The German Association for Occupational Pensions (aba) is widely considered a powerful player in occupational pension politics. While it represents various providers and stakeholders in occupational pensions, including non-financial companies (NFCs), financial companies, unions and pension consultants, it takes ‘structurally conservative’ (interview Leven, Author interview with deputy CEO Deutsches Aktieninstitut Franz-Josef Leven, Berlin, August 9, 2018) positions that tend to align with insurance companies with regards to the issues discussed here.

5 One may reasonably lament that an interviewee could overstate his autodidactic accomplishments. However, in the case of Laux, a lawyer and economist by training, such concerns are mitigated by the fact that his thinking across political issues tends to take the form of derivatives of the law, as became clear throughout the interview with the author.

6 Anglo-American pension funds were not the only foreign reference point to feature in this conflict. A last-minute exchange about Austrian pension funds between insurers, investment companies and the chairman of the Bundestag’s financial committee, Carl-Ludwig Thiele, during the Third Financial Market Promotion Act negotiations illustrates how foreign examples were politically weaponized. In a fax shortly prior to the passing of the law, insurers (GDV) expressed their concerns about AS-funds and tried to "dispel that Austria actually implements something similar," as those products were "fundamentally different" and closer to insurance-based products, contrary to what the BVI had suggested (GDV, 1998). Two days later the BVI countered these allegations, citing recent talks to the Austrian ministry of finance (BVI, 1998).

7 Dixon and Sorsa (2009, p. 358; emphasis in original) would disagree, considering their characterization of the PRA2001: ‘following developments at the EU level, the reform opted for the creation of Anglo-American-style pension funds’. Note that the EU Commission’s pension fund proposal from 2000 did not contain such insurance-fied provisions (Fuest et al., 2001, p. 86).

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG – German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC-2035/1 − 390681379.

Notes on contributors

Nils Röper

Nils Röper is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Cluster of Excellence ‘The Politics of Inequality’ at the University of Konstanz.