Understanding the origins of policy ideas can be crucial when trying to explain dynamics of political change and continuity. Paradigmatic changes in the German pension system have been attributed to the import of “foreign” neoliberal policy ideas from transnational organizations and other countries. The literature describes such processes as policy diffusion, transfer, or translation. In contrast, this article argues that foreign pension ideas did not have a substantive influence on local policy innovations and preference-formation processes. Instead, pension policy pioneers developed their ideas predominantly “from within” through bricolage by reconfiguring long-standing domestic schools of thought. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, the analysis combines a broad historical perspective with case studies of individual policy makers. This sheds new light on the careers of ideas and why significant actors pick them up at certain points.

This article uses a comprehensive theoretical framework to explain why parents send money to particular children, and examines whether intergenerational solidarity is shaped by spending on various welfare domains or provisions as a percentage of gross domestic product. The theoretical model at the level of parents and children distinguishes parental resources and children's needs as the factors most likely to influence intergenerational money transfers. Differences in state spending on various welfare domains are then used to hypothesise in which countries children with specific needs are most likely to receive a transfer. For parents we hypothesise in which countries parents with specific available resources are most likely to send a transfer. We use data from the first wave of the Survey of Health and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to analyse the influence of welfare-state provisions on the likelihood of intergenerational transfers in ten European countries. The results indicate that, in line with our expectations, the likelihood of a transfer being made is the outcome of an intricate resolution of the resources (ability) of the parents and the needs of a child. Rather large differences between countries in money transfers were found. The results suggest that, at least with reference to cross-generational money transfers, no consistent differences by welfare state regime were found.