The International Sources of Social Policy Reconsidered: Foreign and Local Influence on China's Pension Reforms.

The role of international pressure in bringing about social policy reforms in developing countries assumes such influence can be found at the nexus of international organizations (e.g., the World Bank and the IMF) and central governments. With its focus on international organizations and the policy models they promote, this explanatory model underemphasizes the role of foreign investment and trade in shaping domestic social policy outcomes. This paper uses China's experience with pension reforms in the 1990s to propose an alternative model that incorporates local-level actors such as governments and firms and their interaction with global economic forces as a key variable in the making of national social policy. This paper shows how China's pension-dominant welfare regime emerged from the manner in which local governments, which are responsible for social welfare expenditures, have sought to attract foreign investment, promote exports by local firms, and shed uncompetitive state firms. China's pension reforms were thus a product of ad hoc local initiatives to "internationalize," rather than a coherent policy decision taken by the central government with the advice of international institutions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]