Authors

Andrzej Turkowski¹;  ¹ Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

Discussion

Poland, alongside several other "developing" countries, implemented a paradigm-shifting pension reform in the 1990s. This World Bank-inspired neoliberal policy marked a sharp departure from the normative foundations of the existing pension system. The adoption of this policy was preceded by intensive debates and negotiations among various elite actors, including researchers, politicians, trade union leaders, and government officials. These actors often formed alliances—both domestic and international, leveraging diverse resources to advance their agendas.
This paper examines pension reform as a case study to analyze the role of moral elites—individuals with above-average access to various resources that enable them to shape the normative foundations of society. By integrating prosopographical and ideational analyses and employing a mixed-methods approach—including Multidimensional Correspondence Analysis, in-depth interviews, and discourse analysis—I aim to connect policy positions and their supporting normative arguments with actors’ positions in the social structure, such as their sociological backgrounds and career trajectories.
This analysis seeks to answer questions such as: What factors made certain elite actors more susceptible to the influence of external forces, such as international organizations? To what extent did class position shape stances on the reform? What types of resources were instrumental in successfully promoting new normative underpinnings of the welfare state?
This paper contributes to the literature on post-communist welfare states and elite studies by shedding light on the interplay between social structures, normative arguments, and the processes driving policy transformation.