29 The fourth reason is that pensioners have became a very important political constituency. We saw that in East Europe, the Baltics and the Slavic republics of the former Soviet Union, pension recipients represent between 20 and 25 percent of the population (see also Table 7 below). In Slovenia, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Czech republic, they are approaching 30 percent. This represents between % and 40 percent of the voting population.” Not all pensioners entirely depend for their livelihood on pensions. In the FSU, one out of each five or six pensioners has a part-time or full-time formal job; in Eastern Europe, perhaps one in ten.” Some are employed in the informal sector. Many have income in kind, often from the plots of land they cultivate. However, for all of them, pensions are an important, and for most of them, the most important source of income. Thus their interests are virtually identical: to protect pensions from eroding.» This makes them into a powerful political group. They are a large single-issue constituency.*° Further, the success or failure in the defense of that single issue is very transparent—as practically everything depends on the pension formula that is understandable to most people. Thus pensioners combine several elements needed for a successful political mobilization:

# @they are numerous;

@they fight for a single issue; @the issue is transparent; @they have enough time to spend fighting for this issue.*” The fifth reason for downward inflexibility of pension spending lies with what Lindert (1991) has dubbed "affinity". As the population ages, more people get closer to the retirement age and have an interest in keeping the current system unchanged. They feel greater affinity of interest with pensioners and vote accordingly. The affinity is particularly strong if there are many individuals without children. The key role they assign to the state is provision of benefits for the old age. They are not concerned with family benefits, not even with wages of the next generation as they would be if they had children and regarded them as insurance for the old age.

For the so-called pluralist hypothesis on pensioners as voters see Williamson and Pampel (1993).

“Their numbers have declined fast in Eastern Europe. In 1987, about a quarter of pensioners in the Czech republic were employed; in 1992, only 9 percent. In Slovakia, over the same period, the share decreased from 21 to 7 percent (calculated from the countries’ Statistical Yearbooks tor 1993), “Their interests are not entirely coincidental, as there are potential conflicts between different cohorts of pensioners whose pensions are calculated according to different formulas ("old vintage" vs. "new vintage” pensioners, invalidity pensioners vs. old age pensioners etc). The differences between the old and new cohorts of pensioners, to the detriment of the old, used to be very large in several countries (the Soviet Union, Poland). The 1990 changes in the Polish pension law, for example, improved the position of the old pensioners but at a significant cost to the pension fund. “In most countries, pensioners tend to support socialist or former communist parties as these parties are thought to be more inclined to protect pensioners’ interests. In Sofia, a week before the December 1994 parliamentary elections, in anticipation of socialists’ victory, pensioners organized a large celebration with singing and dancing. In Poland, Estonia and Hungary, those over 60 years of age voted overwhelmingly for the left-wing parties (including former Communists) in 1994 and 1995 elections.

“And, thanks to the disappearance of the queues, they now have more free time than in the past.