Post-Communist Welfare Pathways: Theorizing Social Policy Transformations in Central and Eastern Europe

This collection adopts novel theoretical approaches to study the diverse welfare state pathways that have evolved across Central and Eastern Europe since the fall of communism in 1989. Going beyond existing path dependency and neo-institutionalist explanations, it highlights the role of explanatory factors such as micro-causal mechanisms, ideas, discourses, path departures, power politics, and elite strategies.

This book includes contributions from leading international Experts such as Claus Offe, Robert Kaufman, Stefan Haggard, Tomasz Inglot, and Mitchell Orenstein, to examine welfare in specific countries and across social policy domains. By providing a broad overview based on a theoretical foundation and drawing on recent empirical evidence, Post-Communist Welfare Pathways offers a comprehensive, state-of-the-art account of the progress that has been made since 1989, and the main challenges that lie ahead for welfare state regimes in Central and Eastern Europe.

Praise and reviews

“'In this conceptually-sophisticated, richly-informed volume, Cerami and Vanhuysse bring together an exceptional group of scholars to debate path dependence and institutional transformation in CEE welfare states. The authors' impressive analysis of causal factors, including political elites' strategic use of social policy, makes the book an original and important contribution to the comparative welfare state literature.'- Professor Linda J. Cook, Brown University“

'This edited volume is extraordinarily good. The editors are venturing new grounds in the study welfare state change, by deliberately going beyond the easy temptation of modelling new member welfare states after West European examples. The book provides the best overview to date of welfare state transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. It not only does so by bringing together the leading experts on the subject worldwide. The editors' theoretically well-informed and analytically illuminating and innovative approach to the study of welfare state (self-) transformation, which casts new light on the evolution of domestic and supranational social policy, will guarantee that this landmark book will be cited for many years to come. The comparative scope, historical depth, and timely position, should make the volume required reading for academics, students, and policy makers.' - Anton Hemerijck, Free University of Amsterdam

“'An impressive book with a stellar line-up of authors that is theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich as it provides insights into the dynamics of change in Central and Eastern European countries since the Fall of the Berlin Wall. The book shows that there are no simple explanations of the transformation of CEECs' social policies, but that a wide range of factors elucidated by different analytic frameworks—in particular historical and discursive institutionalism—help explain countries' differing trajectories over time, including path-dependent or path-breaking policies, interest-based political coalitions that promote or oppose reform, and national or supranational ideas and discourse that frame those reform efforts.' - Vivien A. Schmidt, Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration, Boston University

‘Quite an extraordinary book. One rarely reads an edited volume in which contributors engage each other the way they do in this book. This is largely the accomplishment of the editors … they have set a tight, novel theoretical agenda, which stimulated and guided the exemplary crew who contributed to the volume. The volume offers a persuasive historical institutional analysis of East European welfare states … this is a balanced evaluation of path-dependency and path departure, continuity and change. … Pieter Vanhuysse persuasively argues that the construction of this emergency welfare state to a large extent was driven by immediate political needs of ruling political elites. In the new democracies the core of the electorate had to be protected from the high social costs of market transitions. In the Visegrad countries, sending laid-off workers into pensions, which were relatively well protected (p. 87) was the mechanism to buy political peace from older people who were more likely to vote anyway. In the Baltic States the same aim was achieved by not giving citizenship to the Russian minorities, hence dislodging class conflict into an ethnic one (pp. 68–69). These largely ad hoc, politically motivated emergency measures were frozen into lasting structures and this resulted in the hybrid character of post-communist welfare states, which carry elements of conservative, social democratic, and neoliberal systems. … This is an agenda setting book, the most comprehensive, theoretically sophisticated work in the emergent large body of literature on post-communist welfare regimes.’ - Contemporary Sociology

*an ambitious conspectus of the principal changes taking place in countries in the Central and Eastern regions of Europe. The focus is on the experience of the nine newer members of the EU. … This cluster of countries forms what Offe in his closing chapter calls ‘terra incognita’, in terms of their welfare states. The editors’ intention is to chart similarities and diversities in the pathways of the development of the latter. … Vanhuysse makes reference to them in his attempt to bring in power politics into the picture, deploying the categories of ‘voice’ and ‘exit’, which Hirschman (1970) developed in his seminal work. The dense aggregation of analyses in this book will repay dipping into and re-visiting, as there is much to digest here.’ - Social Policy & Administration

‚The great merit of this book is that is offers a mass of new information on the evolution of postcommunist welfare states and proposes a wide range of instruments and concepts to understand it. The volume impresses by its historical depth and empirical richess. Its theoretical coherence and the debate engaged in by the different contributors are proof of excellent work by the editors. ... (this book) represents a necessary starting point for all those who want to understand the evolutions of the postcommunist welfare states.‘ - Revue francaise de Science Politique

„a valuable addition to the rapidly growing literature on Central and East European welfare states. ... The editors are to be commended for including policy areas and countries (such as Bulgaria and Romania) which have received inadequate attention ... The book integrates several strands of the existing literature – ranging from national social policy models to specific policy areas – which have rarely been examined together. This is very valuable, as it is only by confronting theories with detailed country case studies and analyses of specific policy areas that scholars will gain a nuanced understanding . ... No one interested in post-communist welfare states can afford to ignore this volume edited by Cerami and Vanhuysse, and it is likely to stimulate further research on this topic. Any scholar working on the region will learn a lot from this book, and it should also be of interest to academics studying welfare states in comparative perspective.“ - West European Politics