1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 7

2. The Privatization of Pension Systems in the Context of

Economic and Political Reforms in Eastern Europe After 1990 .................. 12

3. The Evolution of the Pension System Reform in Eastern Europe ................. 31

4. The Influence of Pension Privatization on Poverty Risk and

Income Inequity ............................................................................................................ 36

5. The Theoretical Framework ...................................................................................... 42

Welfare Theories ......................................................................................................................... 42

Theories of Social Investment ................................................................................................ 47

Pension Systems in the Context of Demographic and Economic Pressures ....... 53

External Factors which Influence Pension Privatization ............................................ 57

The Influence of International Organizations on the Pension

System Reform ......................................................................................................................... 57

The Diffusion Wave Theory ................................................................................................ 61

Internal Factors that Influence Pension Privatization ................................................. 64

Demographic Pressure ......................................................................................................... 65

Short Term Costs of the Reform ....................................................................................... 66

The Influence of Trade Unions .......................................................................................... 71

Presidentialism ........................................................................................................................ 82

The Effective number of parties – the Political Support

of the Government.................................................................................................................. 88

Party positions regarding the costs and benefits of pension reform ..................... 94

6. The First Research Objective ..................................................................................... 99

Main Objective .............................................................................................................................. 99

Preliminary Research ................................................................................................................ 99

External Pressure Theory ................................................................................................... 99

The Diffusion Wave Theory ............................................................................................. 104

Demographic Factors – Ageing ...................................................................................... 107

Economic Factors – Budget Balance ............................................................................ 110

Political Factors – The Effective Number of Political Parties ............................ 113

Hypotheses .................................................................................................................................. 116

Claudiu BARBU

234

The Methodology for the First Research Objective .................................................... 117

The Research Model ........................................................................................................... 119

Results ........................................................................................................................................... 121

Descriptive Results ............................................................................................................. 121

Preliminary Analyses of the Model .............................................................................. 122

The Results of the Event History Analysis Model ................................................... 129

Discussions ............................................................................................................................. 134

Conclusions ................................................................................................................................. 168

7. The Second Research Objective ............................................................................. 184

Main Objective ........................................................................................................................... 184

Preliminary Research ............................................................................................................. 185

Hypotheses .................................................................................................................................. 188

The Methodology for the Second Research Objective ............................................... 191

Discussions .................................................................................................................................. 191

The Evolution of the Pension System in Romania in the

Aftermath of the Anticommunist Revolution of December 1989 .................... 191

Romanian Political Parties and the Pension Reform ............................................ 196

Particularities of the Pension reform in Romania.................................................. 203

Conclusions ................................................................................................................................. 214

8. Conclusions ................................................................................................................... 216

Special Thanks ................................................................................................................. 221

Bibliography ....................................................................................................................... 223