ABSTRACT
The current era will be remembered as one of welfare retrenchment that put
a halt to decades of welfare expansion. Numerous attacks were made on the welfare state, and analysts have vehemently debated the importance and
magnitude of the reforms introduced in industrialized countries. Public
pension systems are cited as being notoriously resistant to change during
those debates. Their maturity and popularity leave reform-minded politi-
cians little scope for revision (Pierson 1996; Bonoli 2000). These hurdles did
not, however, stop British and Swedish politicians in their successful attempt
to enact various reforms. Ironically, they faced less opposition than their
French, Belgian and German peers, even though they proposed reforms far more limited in scope. The French government had to face millions of pro-
testers in its numerous attempts to reform the welfare state. This puzzling
outcome is the focus of this study, which attempts to delineate those factors
that impede and/or facilitate policy change. Within the broader category of
policy change, pension reform was chosen as the focus owing to its complex
and numerous attributes.
