This article focuses on two pension reforms in Egypt in order to understand the dynamics of social policy reform under authoritarian rule. One was supported by the World Bank and promulgated in 2010. It included drastic changes, such as the introduction of a defined benefit scheme, and ultimately failed. Another was successfully implemented in 2019. Compared to the 2010 reform, the 2019 reform involved only parametric change (such as increasing the retirement age and amalgamating social insurance funds), in order to mitigate the criticisms that had been made of the previous pension reform and to facilitate gradual, steady enhancement of the programme’s sustainability. The findings suggest that perceptions of authoritarian leaders as having wide-ranging discretion in decision-making concerning public policy and being able to more decisively implement harsh social reform compared with democratic political leaders need to be reconsidered.