Abstract

Pension policy in Italy presented diverse traits in two different phases. Until the early-1990s, policies were mostly expansionary and distributive; after 1992 retrenchment interventions were accompanied measures aimed at prompting a transition towards a multipillar system. The article argues that these changes affected the very nature of pension policy making, which actually split in two different arenas respectively regarding the first pension pillar and supplementary funded schemes. While in the former traditional actors government, parties and social partners - remained central, the latter was characterized by the emergence of a «new politics» of pensions. Institutional transformations and the prominence of regulatory issues have thus radically modified the constellation of actors involved, by opening the pension policy making primarily to groups representative of financial institutions.