Adjusting social welfare and social policy in Central and Eastern Europe: growth, crisis and recession

Abstract

Despite the shared history of socialist welfare state adaptation, there is consensus among scholars that Central and Eastern European (CEE) welfare states do not conform to either a putative post-socialist welfare state type or to Esping-Andersen's (1990) welfare regime typology developed for advanced capitalist welfare states (Deacon 2000; Fenger 2007; Aidukaite 2009; Inglot 2009). This is not surprising considering that welfare states in CEE are but a few years younger than their Western neighbours (Haggard and Kaufman, 2008; Inglot 2008; Mares and Carnes 2009) and that their historical evolution-despite their Bismarckian foundations, the homogenizing influence of the soviet model and the emergency, ad hoc and inconsistent institutional adjustments during the first two decades of post-socialism-has been as complex and diverse as that of their advanced capitalist counterparts (Inglot 2008, 2009; Cook 2010). This diversity is observable not only in terms of variations in the salience of institutional legacies from different historical periods across welfare domains, the timing, dynamics and direction of welfare reforms after the dissolution of state socialism and welfare state size, but also variations in the resulting architectures of mixed economies of welfare across policy domains and in the structure of inequalities and social outcomes. We agree, therefore, with Cerami's (2009, p. 51) assessment that welfare states in the European post-socialist and post-soviet space are best understood as 'unique hybrids', moreover, likely on diverging paths of development (see also Cook 2010; Deacon and Standing 1993; Orenstein and Haas 2002; Potucek 2008; Haggard and Kaufman 2008). As such, these welfare states may be grouped together at best only on the most general grounds and without sensitivity to differences in magnitude and kind. The shared Bismarckian and soviet-inspired institutional legacies are one broad similarity which might invite arguments of greater similarity than dissimilarity, although Inglot (2008) convincingly outlines the institutional variations that persisted despite these. The experience of welfare state adjustment during the 1990s, characterized by ad hoc, emergency institutional and policy transformations (Nunberg 1999; Deacon 2000, p. 149; Sotiropoulos and Pop 2007; Inglot 2009) and a highly volatile, cyclical expand-then-retrench, stop-and-go reform process during this period (Sotiropoulos et al. 2003; Inglot 2009; Szikra and Tomka 2009; Cook 2010) may also be cited as another shared feature of CEE welfare states, although again, scholars have highlighted variations certainly in degree (see Cerami and Vanhuysse 2009). Those emphasizing similarities over differences could also cite a propensity towards cushioning social policy adjustments in the early stages of post-socialist welfare state reform, although selective in scope, followed by path-departing institutional innovations during the late

When a crisis undermines quality public service provision: Romanian early childhood education and care through the SARS-Cov-2 epidemic

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“…Means-tested cash benefits to needy families were late to be introduced in the late 1990s, have been consistently ungenerous and changes in the aftermath of the 2008-2009 global crisis came with school attendance-related conditionalities that exclude the neediest (Popescu, 2015). Finally, indirect transfers through the tax system have been either absent (most of the 1990s) or ungenerous, amounting to insignificant tax savings (Kovács et al, 2017). In short, public support for Romanian families in the form of direct and indirect cash benefits has been historically selective, ungenerous and, certainly during the post-socialist decades, out of reach for the neediest.…”

Flat-rate personal income tax in Lithuania, Romania and Hungary: A revolutionary policy idea without revolutionary outcomes

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The exclusionary side of (women’s) social citizenship in Southeastern Europe: childcare policy development in Bosnia-Herzegovina and gender, social and territorial inequalities

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