The Political Economy of Russian Pension Reform

Abstract

Among many reform agenda, President Putin placed a special emphasis on pension reform because of its social and political significance in the worsening economic situations for the working masses. By setting up a new "National Soviet for Pension Reform", Putin Government tried to consolidate the conflicting views among various social strata which hindered the realization of reform in the past several years. The major difficulties were to find ways to change the old "redistributive" system to the new "funding" system. This article tries to analyze first the basic economic problems facing the reformers and then political and lawmaking process and its latest developments in the year 2001.