"This chapter analyses pension-privatization strategies and outcomes in two late-reforming countries: the Czech Republic and Romania. Using a set of pairwise comparisons between the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and Romania and Bulgaria, the chapter shows that privatization was initially imported into the region with the help of international actors and local policy entrepreneurs who perceived it as the only solution to demographic ageing. Thus, early privatizers adopted variations of pension privatization closest to the World Bank's ideal. By contrast, through learning, late reformers have deviated from early privatizers. While the decision to privatize among late reformers was determined by the ideological preferences of the policy-makers in charge of pensions, the specific policy choice in each case was adapted to fit the critiques raised by opponents of pension privatization. Late reformers specifically focused on problems experienced by their early-reformer neighbors, whom they perceived as best examples to learn from."

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