This paper proposes to analyse the system of american pension plans from an institutional and historical point of view. Since the 1970s, changes in pension regulation have occured simultaneoulsy with changes in capital markets, industrial relations and civil and social rights areas. Analysis is led in two steps. First, we show the strong imbrication existing between reforms of pension funds system and evolutions of practices of capital markets. The resulting retirement financement system can be characterized by a more individualised conception of retirement scheme, and an organization of financial operators based on procedures. Second, through existing analysis on evolutions of industrial relations and civil rights movements (trade unions and collective bargaining decline, extension of civil and social rights), we show a corresponding move towards an individualised definition of conflicts. Those conflicts tend to be resolved through courts. This parallelism offers the opportunity to a more general program of analysis for institutional changes. It is based on a formal interdependancy of evolutions of political design and symbolic context and evolutions of economic institutions.