Comparing how various nations administer retirement income: essays on social security, privatisation, and inter-generational covenants, edited by Mark Hyde and John Dixon

To the extent that it has engaged with the philosophical debate on distributive justice, comparative social policy analysis has emphasised the importance of social solidarity. It is asserted that vast disparities in income and wealth are destructive of the mutual obligations that root the individual in the community. A fraternal society, we are told, requires statutory measures to circumscribe differentials in the distribution of material resources. In particular, solidarity requires publicly administered services and income transfers that cohere around the principle of universality, which can be defined in terms of equality of treatment regarding access and benefit entitlements. Privately administered services and transfers, where access is determined in terms of the cash nexus, reinforce social divisions and are therefore fundamentally incapable of sustaining solidarity. The dominant normative paradigm in the comparative social policy literature, then, holds that there is a single model of pensions that is capable of realising egalitarian distributive ends, and that alternative models, particularly those that rely on private provision, should be rejected. Hyde and Dixon’s book takes issue with this argument, first by highlighting the range of normative ideals that can inform the design and evaluation of pensions, and second by illustrating the ways in which privately administered retirement schemes can address the concerns that are important to distributive justice. This is an exciting undertaking that is approached from a multi-disciplinary perspective, with a focus on the pension provision that exists in the space between the two worlds of private and state retirement systems. This intermediate sphere is rarely addressed by the wider literature dealing with retirement provision, either from an economic or a social policy perspective. For this volume – which is well-written and easily accessible to the non-expert – the Editors have brought together scholars from far around the globe, all distinguished experts in the field, and each with an impressive record of academic experience that is highly relevant to the aims of the book. A particular theme discussed throughout the volume is the role of non-market/ non-state actors and agencies in the organisation and administration of pensions, which is an important issue both empirically and theoretically. A central premise of the book is that once we consider this role we begin to understand that the private organisation of retirement provision (with ‘‘private’’ meaning that pension saving is devolved to non-statutory agencies running funded plans) does not necessarily result in the problematic outcomes that are commonly associated with free unregulated markets.