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| Globalisation and Flexibility: Dancing Around Pensions Guy Standing, June 2000 Across the world, almost without exception, pensions have become the subject of intense and controversial debates. In most places, the debates have been clouded by commercial, political and economic undercurrents that have had little to do with the simple process of finding ways of providing an adequate income for those who have "retired" from the labour force in some way. Ideological crusades have particularly characterized the debates on pension reform in Latin America and eastern Europe, with countries in the latter region intent on emulating policies introduced in Chile and elsewhere, commonly pushed by outsiders, notably the IMF and World Bank. Indeed, one's position on pension reform has almost been a touchstone of one's position on the political spectrum. Contributing further to the intensity of controversy, heavy lobbying by powerful commercial interests have scarcely contributed to objective assessments of the options for improving income security and human development. Although some analysts have placed the pension reform debates in a broader social and economic context, there is a distinct possibility that we may be missing the plot altogether by focusing on pensions per se without considering wider changes taking place in the economy, in the labour market, and in the way a growing number of people are organizing their lives, or wish to do so.
This paper has a modest objective, and will not deal with the specifics of pension systems, which are best left to those with much more expertise at this conference. The objective is to set out some of the contextual issues around the pension reform debates. An underlying premise is that the "pensions crisis", as popularly depicted, is not primarily about the pension system but about the political, social and economic changes taking place around it.
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