Between East and West: Government–Nonprofit Relations in Welfare Provision in Post-Socialist Central Europe

Abstract

This article reviews the main developments in social welfare provision in East Central Europe (ECE), the emergence of nonprofit organizations as welfare providers, and changing nonprofit–government relations in social welfare provision since the early 1990s. In assessing the strengths and weaknesses of nonprofit organization (NPO)–government relations in social welfare provision in ECE, the article suggests that after establishing a firm basis by the mid-2000s, to varying degrees in different countries, nonprofits have not been able to maintain a secure independent role in the face of fluctuating government attitudes to their role and growing competition from private sector and church organizations.

Politics and the environment in Eastern Europe

“…Far from the immediate post-Soviet period assumptions around the 'inevitable' route to the development of democratic and rule-of-law norms, Hungarian society has been greatly economically (neo)liberalised over the past three decades, while societally it has remained relatively closed. Its civil society sector is made up of numerous local groups that are again increasingly apolitical and focused on activities that are deemed to have minimal political risk, such as sport and leisure (Szalai and Svensson, 2018), as the Orbán government tries to administratively and financially reign in the activities and power of these groups away from politically sensitive subjects (Cox, 2020).…”