Structural Contingencies: Capitalist Constraints and Historical Contingency in the Rise and Fall of Pensions

After World War II, collectively bargained private pensions were installed as an alternative to Social Security expansions. But these plans began to go into decline in the 1980s, when defined-contribution retirement accounts, such as 401(k)s, came to replace them. This article makes three arguments about this rise and fall to contribute toward a theory of structural contingency. First, in both episodes, state intervention into labor-management relations triggered policy changes in the private pension system. Second, policy makers were motivated to intervene because of a structural condition—namely, to manage perceived crises in capitalism. And third, the particular way they intervened and how their policy choices spurred pension marketization were driven by contingent historical circumstances. This article argues that structural constraints that inhere in capitalist democracies established a range of possible policy options available to policy makers, yet contingent and historical factors channeled policy selection within that range.