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This chapter by Ebbinghaus and Gronwald provides a comparative historical analysis mapping the cross-national institutional diversity in the evolution of pension systems in ten European countries. Analysing the long-term development, it describes the way in which institutional arrangements in private pensions evolved over time and interact with public pension reforms. The process of institutional change is examined by analysing critical junctures in the public–private pension mix. First, the early legacy and path-dependent post-war dynamics in public pension development are sketched, contrasting Bismarckian social insurance and Beveridge basic pension traditions. The second juncture compares successful versus belated or even failed expansion of public pensions to secure living standards in old age, and its consequences for crowding out private pensions. Finally, the more recent pension reforms led towards a multipillar pension system, in some cases retrenchment of public pensions and privatization efforts are crowding in funded private pensions.

Following the Bismarckian social insurance tradition, the post-war pension system of France has been characterized by occupational fragmentation, its strong reliance on pay-as-you-go financing, and by the direct involvement of employers and trade unions in their management. Generous benefits offered a combination of statutory public pension and mandatory occupational pensions, initially crowding out any funded private pensions. However, pension reforms that promoted retrenchment both in the two pay-as-you-go-financed statutory public and occupational pension schemes since the 1990s have resulted in the gradual development of funded private pensions. In recent years, the governance of mandatory occupational schemes has been harmonized and inequalities between different occupational categories have been reduced. While the regulatory framework governing voluntarily funded plans (both occupational and personal pensions) has been largely unified, access to these schemes remains mostly limited to high-skilled employees.

The chapter first reviews the emergence and change of the public–private pension mix in Germany, emphasizing the path-dependent but recent path-departing developments from the Bismarckian social insurance tradition. The politically contentious pension reforms of the 1990s and subsequent reforms in the 2000s followed a strategy of institutional layering by introducing a voluntary personal (‘Riester’) pension, while fostering coexisting occupational pensions. At the same time, the reforms of public pensions made voluntary private pensions necessary for status maintenance in old age. The second part analyses the structure and governance of occupational and personal pensions in Germany, highlighting the new instruments for the design of occupational pensions such as collective agreements and collective pension institutions self-administered by employers and trade unions. The chapter concludes with an outlook on the future, discussing potential scenarios for institutional change and its consequences for old age income in Germany.

Belgium's public–private pension mix can be considered a paradox: despite the conservative-corporatist welfare regime and rather limited Bismarckian social insurance for old age, voluntarist occupational pensions remained underdeveloped. Until recent pension reforms, the comparatively low replacement rates of public pensions did not lead to the development of extensive occupational plans, even if several institutional conditions that elsewhere advanced the expansion of supplementary pensions were given. The chapter also reviews the governance of private pensions, discussing how recent attempts to broaden access to occupational pensions have been facilitated and frustrated by the decision to embed those schemes into the neo-corporatist system of collective agreements. Although this allows to extend coverage of private pensions for lower income groups, at the same time it also severely limited the possibility to mobilize funds that are necessary to guarantee adequate income maintenance for the general population.

In Italy, the move from a dominant public pension pillar based on a pay-as-you-go-financed Bismarckian social insurance towards a multipillar system is an instructive example of a ‘top-down’ process pursued by governments in order to compensate for the far-reaching pension reforms in the 1990s. Change began during difficult socio-economic and financial conditions when policymakers opted to exploit the pre-existing severance-pay scheme as an ‘institutional gate’ in order to boost private supplementary pensions. However, this strategy ruled out compulsory affiliation to the new funded schemes, thereby limiting their potential coverage. The establishment of supplementary pensions has recently given rise to a ‘new politics’ putting pressure on policymakers, employers, and trade unions for regulatory harmonization between occupational funds and personal pension schemes.