I am not sure if we should be surprised or not by the results of this book, which is about the power and influence of international organisations, such as the World Bank, in pensions' policy. The field deserves much more analysis than it has received to date. It is crying out for a theoretical framework, which the author attempts to provide. This is useful but I do not think it works. It implies that the World Bank is somehow exercising a moral authority (or an ‘ideational’ force, or ‘best practice‘), and that it has no particular economic or political interest (unlike multi-national companies for example). This is because it has no or limited ‘veto power’ over policy-making. It has to use powers of example and moral value. If this is the upshot of the theory, something is awry. An opposing view is that the World Bank and its sometimes fractious ‘sister’, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), had enormous veto power in the period under review. When it broke down, because for example the United States was looking the other way – the war on Iraq is the watershed in this transformation of power structures – a country could do as it wanted concerning its international debt and relationship with these Bretton Woods' institutions (Cooper and Momani Reference Cooper and Bessma2005; Helleiner Reference Helleiner2005). The ‘moral authority’ vanished when economic power shifted.

The international wave of pension privatisations (defined in the book as switching to individual, ‘defined contribution’ saving systems, i.e. pensions are dependent on what you pay, what your investments produce, minus the experts' charges) has thrown up so many fundamental problems on its own ‘ideational’ or ‘best practice ’ terms in such a short space of time (Minns Reference Minns2007). One has the sneaking suspicion that the real reason for privatisation was something else. The World Bank and others may have failed (let's say) but they are not stupid (the author refers frequently to many at the World Bank and elsewhere as ‘scholars’). If they had advocated the nationalisation of pension systems, do we believe that the US and other funders would have carried on paying them or underwriting their ‘generous’ pension arrangements. In other words, the World Bank and its allies could not have achieved what they have without something more than sweet-talk – their ‘normative beliefs and organisational priorities’ (p. 9). Dissenters in the World Bank resigned and others, in Orwellian fashion, changed the title of their critical report (from negative to positive) so as not to offend the moral authority.

Orenstein has spent a lot of time with the World Bank. He was invited to join its Political Economy of Pension Reform Project in 1998 by Estelle James, the co-ordinator. The project culminated in the seminal 1994 report, Averting the Old Age Crisis: Policies to Protect the Old AND Promote Growth, more Orwellian-speak. He provides many fascinating refinements and revelations about policy decisions, but at times I felt it was the World Bank speaking, not the author. The statement that, ‘After all, both organisations [the IMF and World Bank] in theory operate under the larger UN umbrella’ (p. 80), is puzzling and raises serious historical and structural questions about the analysis. What does ‘in theory’ mean? Plus, ‘[The 1994 report] established the World Bank as the foremost authority in pension reform research and thinking’ (p. 76). Some might disagree. The author's long list of 'scholars' he interviewed does not include Teresa Ghiularducci, Jay Ginn, Sue Ward, Bernard Friot, and others from the US, the UK, France and Australia who would have given this ‘authority’ at the time a run for its money, and were publishing better analyses of pensions' issues, depending on one's point of view. The objectivity of the book is questionable.

The author also does not carry his thoughts far enough. This reader was at times excited by a revelation or idea, but it then fizzled out. Sometimes the theory obscures the facts. For example, ‘The widespread impact of transnational policy actors raises questions about power in the international system, the extent of US hegemony, forces of global governance, and the nature of democratic sovereignty’. This is promising, but it is followed by ‘the campaign for pension privatisation cannot be traced back entirely to US government policy. It is more closely associated with Chilean government policy … [I]t is not simply a US model’ (p. 166). But who backed the coup in Chile which led to the death of a democratically-elected president, the ‘disappearance’ of 9,000 citizens and the introduction of a radical pension privatisation system which other Latin American countries emulated with World Bank and USAID (and CIA) support? In other words, while emphasising the role of transnational organisations in social policy development, the author loses the plot. His theory and explanations disappoint, and thereby the theory of ‘veto’ and ‘proposal’ players loses its edge because it is too shallow, and maybe naïve, in this application. Numerous questions arise but it is a worthwhile and well-researched book, a valuable contribution to the literature and analysis of international organisations in social policy. Regardless of whether you support the ‘veto’ versus ‘proposal’ actor theory of decision-making or not, I have no doubt the book will appear on reading lists for social policy and political science students, an important addition to this controversial area of who is responsible for what in the area of private welfare. But it doesn't quite get there.