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Politics, Fiscal Necessity, or Both? Factors Driving the Enactment of Defined Contribution Accounts for Public Employees
Author(s) -
Thom Michael
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
public administration review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.721
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1540-6210
pISSN - 0033-3352
DOI - 10.1111/puar.12042
Subject(s) - politics , legislature , legislation , pension , economics , state (computer science) , public economics , public sector , private pension , political science , public administration , finance , law , economy , algorithm , computer science
Recent conflicts over public sector defined benefit pension funding have inspired polarized debates about the need for reform, including the utility of replacing pensions with defined contribution accounts, which are popular throughout the private sector. Between 1996 and 2011, 15 American states enacted legislation to implement either mandatory or optional defined contribution accounts for certain public employees. What drove this process? This article investigates the role of political, budgetary, and contagion influences on the diffusion of defined contribution accounts for general state employees. Empirical results suggest that enactments were influenced by Republican legislative, but not executive, partisanship. Gains in state indebtedness also increased the likelihood of enactment independent of political and other factors. There is no evidence of policy learning based on neighboring state activity and no influence from two measures of organized labor power. Both quantitative and qualitative robustness checks largely reinforce these findings .