Mark Hyde - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Dr. Hyde's research and published work has encompassed several themes including comparative income distributions and social security analysis, social security design, labour markets and disadvantage, social class and political attitudes, and the privatisation of public services. He is currently engaged in work on the normative foundations of appropriate pension scheme design. How do the concerns of political philosophers regarding rights, needs, citizenship, desert and freedom translate into requirements that shape social security institutions? This work has two central aims. The first is to develop and refine a liberal reform agenda for pensions. The second is to develop a set of indicators that can be used to appraise the capacity of existing retirement systems to promote distributive justice.
Phone: 01752 233230
Address: Plymouth Business School,
University of Plymouth,
Plymouth PL4 8AA,
United Kingdom.
less
Uploads
Books by Mark Hyde
Papers by Mark Hyde
There follows a proof of the article you have written for publication in Journal of Social Policy... more There follows a proof of the article you have written for publication in Journal of Social Policy. Please check the proofs carefully, make any corrections necessary and answer queries on the proofs. Queries raised by the sub-editor are listed below; the text to which the queries refer is flagged in the margins of the proof.
Purpose -According to one influential set of arguments, the privatization of public pensions has ... more Purpose -According to one influential set of arguments, the privatization of public pensions has been informed by neoliberalism, and has thus been an integral element of a broader program of welfare retrenchment, which is inconsistent with social cohesion. The paper aims to take issue with this negative characterization of pensions privatization. Design/methodology/approach -The argument is illustrated by a cross-national comparative analysis of the principal design features of 32 mandated private pension arrangements. Findings -The market orientation of mandated private pension arrangements is generally ambivalent. Whilst the architects of these arrangements have embraced market principles, they have also accepted the principle of collective responsibility for retirement futures. Research limitations/implications -While design is an important indicator of the nature of pension schemes, it does not translate automatically into retirement outcomes. Practical implications -Collective responsibility for retirement may be pursued through distinctive forms of privatization. Originality/value -In contrast to the central argument of much of the literature, the privatization of public pensions has not universally or unambiguously been informed by the tenets of neoliberal political economy.
In a number of recent policy statements, the Labour government has developed a series of reforms ... more In a number of recent policy statements, the Labour government has developed a series of reforms for employer-sponsored company pension schemes, an integral element of the contracting out arrangement of compulsory second-tier pensions. At best, the reforms are ambivalent. While they address a number of important issues, they are likely to reinforce income insecurity. Above all, we identify a range of issues that must be integral to the reform of company pensions, but that have been ignored by the government -compulsory employer contributions, universality and the role of employees in sponsoring and administering pension schemes.
Although neo-classical economics has undoubtedly driven the global pension privatization reform a... more Although neo-classical economics has undoubtedly driven the global pension privatization reform agenda, it does not provide an adequate framework for the reform of retirement income protection. Indeed, it poses salient decision risks for policy-makers because of its naturalist epistemology and agency ontology, which deny both the value of hermeneutic knowledge and the existence of structural imperatives. When confronted with the challenge of income maintenance for those in retirement, policy-makers must necessarily tackle strategically important, values-laden questions. This requires them to engage in policy discourses that are informed by competing welfare ideologies. Reflecting these discourses, national governments have adopted three reform approaches to public pension privatization. All are consistent with values of community solidarity, social cohesion and citizenship rights, which are seen by national governments to be preferable to the values that underpin neo-classical economic analysis, namely, individual responsibility, freedom of choice and contractual rights.
By the mid-1990s, 163 countries had statutory general disability programmes. Most have adopted so... more By the mid-1990s, 163 countries had statutory general disability programmes. Most have adopted social insurance as their primary policy instrument, which restricts coverage to those in paid formal employment, makes benefit eligibility dependent upon the satisfying of specific minimum contribution period requirements and provides earnings-related pensions. Many countries also provide supplementary and special need benefits. Programme funding comes overwhelmingly from employer and employee contributions, with a majority of countries providing government subsidies. Using a methodology that assesses national statutory social security intentions, a ranking of these disability programmes reveals that Australia has the best designed one.
Disabled people of working age have been at the heart of recent welfare restructuring in the Unit... more Disabled people of working age have been at the heart of recent welfare restructuring in the United Kingdom, but this has received little attention from mainstream social policy analysis. Both Conservative and Labour governments have introduced measures to promote labour force participation among disabled people, whilst discouraging dependence on welfare benefits. Whilst this new approach has been justified in terms of reducing poverty, its underlying imperatives are essentially inegalitarian. The welfare reform process has been driven by a number of official concerns including a perception of unsustainable fiscal pressures and a belief that perverse incentives in the social security benefit system have undermined economic efficiency. Moreover, it has been legitimated by an ideology of citizenship, which has shifted the moral responsibility for needs satisfaction away from the state to the individual. The paper concludes by identifying a better approach to welfare reform for disabled people of working age.
There follows a proof of the article you have written for publication in Journal of Social Policy... more There follows a proof of the article you have written for publication in Journal of Social Policy. Please check the proofs carefully, make any corrections necessary and answer queries on the proofs. Queries raised by the sub-editor are listed below; the text to which the queries refer is flagged in the margins of the proof.
Purpose -According to one influential set of arguments, the privatization of public pensions has ... more Purpose -According to one influential set of arguments, the privatization of public pensions has been informed by neoliberalism, and has thus been an integral element of a broader program of welfare retrenchment, which is inconsistent with social cohesion. The paper aims to take issue with this negative characterization of pensions privatization. Design/methodology/approach -The argument is illustrated by a cross-national comparative analysis of the principal design features of 32 mandated private pension arrangements. Findings -The market orientation of mandated private pension arrangements is generally ambivalent. Whilst the architects of these arrangements have embraced market principles, they have also accepted the principle of collective responsibility for retirement futures. Research limitations/implications -While design is an important indicator of the nature of pension schemes, it does not translate automatically into retirement outcomes. Practical implications -Collective responsibility for retirement may be pursued through distinctive forms of privatization. Originality/value -In contrast to the central argument of much of the literature, the privatization of public pensions has not universally or unambiguously been informed by the tenets of neoliberal political economy.
In a number of recent policy statements, the Labour government has developed a series of reforms ... more In a number of recent policy statements, the Labour government has developed a series of reforms for employer-sponsored company pension schemes, an integral element of the contracting out arrangement of compulsory second-tier pensions. At best, the reforms are ambivalent. While they address a number of important issues, they are likely to reinforce income insecurity. Above all, we identify a range of issues that must be integral to the reform of company pensions, but that have been ignored by the government -compulsory employer contributions, universality and the role of employees in sponsoring and administering pension schemes.
Although neo-classical economics has undoubtedly driven the global pension privatization reform a... more Although neo-classical economics has undoubtedly driven the global pension privatization reform agenda, it does not provide an adequate framework for the reform of retirement income protection. Indeed, it poses salient decision risks for policy-makers because of its naturalist epistemology and agency ontology, which deny both the value of hermeneutic knowledge and the existence of structural imperatives. When confronted with the challenge of income maintenance for those in retirement, policy-makers must necessarily tackle strategically important, values-laden questions. This requires them to engage in policy discourses that are informed by competing welfare ideologies. Reflecting these discourses, national governments have adopted three reform approaches to public pension privatization. All are consistent with values of community solidarity, social cohesion and citizenship rights, which are seen by national governments to be preferable to the values that underpin neo-classical economic analysis, namely, individual responsibility, freedom of choice and contractual rights.
By the mid-1990s, 163 countries had statutory general disability programmes. Most have adopted so... more By the mid-1990s, 163 countries had statutory general disability programmes. Most have adopted social insurance as their primary policy instrument, which restricts coverage to those in paid formal employment, makes benefit eligibility dependent upon the satisfying of specific minimum contribution period requirements and provides earnings-related pensions. Many countries also provide supplementary and special need benefits. Programme funding comes overwhelmingly from employer and employee contributions, with a majority of countries providing government subsidies. Using a methodology that assesses national statutory social security intentions, a ranking of these disability programmes reveals that Australia has the best designed one.
Disabled people of working age have been at the heart of recent welfare restructuring in the Unit... more Disabled people of working age have been at the heart of recent welfare restructuring in the United Kingdom, but this has received little attention from mainstream social policy analysis. Both Conservative and Labour governments have introduced measures to promote labour force participation among disabled people, whilst discouraging dependence on welfare benefits. Whilst this new approach has been justified in terms of reducing poverty, its underlying imperatives are essentially inegalitarian. The welfare reform process has been driven by a number of official concerns including a perception of unsustainable fiscal pressures and a belief that perverse incentives in the social security benefit system have undermined economic efficiency. Moreover, it has been legitimated by an ideology of citizenship, which has shifted the moral responsibility for needs satisfaction away from the state to the individual. The paper concludes by identifying a better approach to welfare reform for disabled people of working age.