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Author: Linda J. Cook
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801458234
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285
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Book Description
In the early 1990s, the countries of the former Soviet Bloc faced an urgent need to reform the systems by which they delivered broad, basic social welfare to their citizens. Inherited systems were inefficient and financially unsustainable. Linda J. Cook here explores the politics and policy of social welfare from 1990 to 2004 in the Russian Federation, Poland, Hungary, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Most of these countries, she shows, tried to institute reforms based on a liberal paradigm of reduced entitlements and subsidies, means-testing, and privatization. But these proposals provoked opposition from pro-welfare interests, and the politics of negotiating change varied substantially from one political arena to another. In Russia, for example, liberalizing reform was blocked for a decade. Only as Vladimir Putin rose to power did the country change its inherited welfare system. Cook finds that the impact of economic pressures on welfare was strongly mediated by domestic political factors, including the level of democratization and balance of pro- and anti-reform political forces. Postcommunist welfare politics throughout Russia and Eastern Europe, she shows, are marked by the large role played by bureaucratic welfare stakeholders who were left over from the communist period and, in weak states, by the development of informal processes in social sectors.
Author: Linda J. Cook
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801458234
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285
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Book Description
In the early 1990s, the countries of the former Soviet Bloc faced an urgent need to reform the systems by which they delivered broad, basic social welfare to their citizens. Inherited systems were inefficient and financially unsustainable. Linda J. Cook here explores the politics and policy of social welfare from 1990 to 2004 in the Russian Federation, Poland, Hungary, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Most of these countries, she shows, tried to institute reforms based on a liberal paradigm of reduced entitlements and subsidies, means-testing, and privatization. But these proposals provoked opposition from pro-welfare interests, and the politics of negotiating change varied substantially from one political arena to another. In Russia, for example, liberalizing reform was blocked for a decade. Only as Vladimir Putin rose to power did the country change its inherited welfare system. Cook finds that the impact of economic pressures on welfare was strongly mediated by domestic political factors, including the level of democratization and balance of pro- and anti-reform political forces. Postcommunist welfare politics throughout Russia and Eastern Europe, she shows, are marked by the large role played by bureaucratic welfare stakeholders who were left over from the communist period and, in weak states, by the development of informal processes in social sectors.
Author: Linda J. Cook
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801460093
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285
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Book Description
In the early 1990s, the countries of the former Soviet Bloc faced an urgent need to reform the systems by which they delivered broad, basic social welfare to their citizens. Inherited systems were inefficient and financially unsustainable. Linda J. Cook here explores the politics and policy of social welfare from 1990 to 2004 in the Russian Federation, Poland, Hungary, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Most of these countries, she shows, tried to institute reforms based on a liberal paradigm of reduced entitlements and subsidies, means-testing, and privatization. But these proposals provoked opposition from pro-welfare interests, and the politics of negotiating change varied substantially from one political arena to another. In Russia, for example, liberalizing reform was blocked for a decade. Only as Vladimir Putin rose to power did the country change its inherited welfare system. Cook finds that the impact of economic pressures on welfare was strongly mediated by domestic political factors, including the level of democratization and balance of pro- and anti-reform political forces. Postcommunist welfare politics throughout Russia and Eastern Europe, she shows, are marked by the large role played by bureaucratic welfare stakeholders who were left over from the communist period and, in weak states, by the development of informal processes in social sectors.
Author: Alfio Cerami
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9780230230262
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
This book adopts novel theoretical approaches to study the diverse welfare pathways that have evolved across Central and Eastern Europe since the end of communism. It highlights the role of explanatory factors such as micro-causal mechanisms, power politics, path departure, and elite strategies.
Author: Kati Kuitto
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1784711985
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219
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Book Description
Welfare reforms in post-communist countries are determined by economic and social hardship, democratization of the political systems and rapid structural change. This groundbreaking book provides a comprehensive and systematic empirical assessment of the Central and Eastern European post-communist welfare states in the context of their Western European counterparts. Basing the study on new data on welfare entitlements and cluster analysis, Kati Kuitto systematically compares 26 European welfare states across three empirical dimensions. The author employs a multidimensional framework to analyze patterns of welfare policies and highlight spending priorities, financing and the generosity of welfare entitlements. Kati Kuitto thus sheds light on the hybrid patterns of welfare policies in post-communist countries as they have emerged after the period of transformation and discusses their future challenges. Unique and comprehensive, this is essential reading for researchers in the fields of comparative welfare state research and Central and Eastern European studies, as well as students and practitioners of social policy, social security and political economy.
Author: Stephan Haggard
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691214158
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 497
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Book Description
This is the first book to compare the distinctive welfare states of Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe. Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman trace the historical origins of social policy in these regions to crucial political changes in the mid-twentieth century, and show how the legacies of these early choices are influencing welfare reform following democratization and globalization. After World War II, communist regimes in Eastern Europe adopted wide-ranging socialist entitlements while conservative dictatorships in East Asia sharply limited social security but invested in education. In Latin America, where welfare systems were instituted earlier, unequal social-security systems favored formal sector workers and the middle class. Haggard and Kaufman compare the different welfare paths of the countries in these regions following democratization and the move toward more open economies. Although these transformations generated pressure to reform existing welfare systems, economic performance and welfare legacies exerted a more profound influence. The authors show how exclusionary welfare systems and economic crisis in Latin America created incentives to adopt liberal social-policy reforms, while social entitlements from the communist era limited the scope of liberal reforms in the new democracies of Eastern Europe. In East Asia, high growth and permissive fiscal conditions provided opportunities to broaden social entitlements in the new democracies. This book highlights the importance of placing the contemporary effects of democratization and globalization into a broader historical context.
Author: S. Saxonberg
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137319399
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302
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Book Description
Through the use of a historical-institutional perspective and with particular reference to the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia; this study explores the state of family policies in Post-Communist Europe. It analyzes how these policies have developed and examines their impact on gender relations for the countries mentioned.
Author: Melani Cammett
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801470323
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 318
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Book Description
Across the world, welfare states are under challenge—or were never developed extensively in the first place—while non-state actors increasingly provide public goods and basic welfare. In many parts of the Middle East and South Asia, sectarian organizations and political parties supply basic services to ordinary people more extensively and effectively than governments. In sub-Saharan Africa, families struggle to pay hospital fees, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) launch welfare programs as states cut subsidies and social programs. Likewise, in parts of Latin America, international and domestic NGOs and, increasingly, private firms are key suppliers of social welfare in both urban and rural communities. Even in the United States, where the welfare state is far more developed, secular NGOs and faith-based organizations are critical components of social safety nets. Despite official entitlements to public welfare, citizens in Russia face increasing out-of-pocket expenses as they are effectively compelled to seek social services through the private market In The Politics of Non-State Social Welfare, a multidisciplinary group of contributors use survey data analysis, spatial analysis, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic and archival research to explore the fundamental transformation of the relationship between states and citizens. The book highlights the political consequences of the non-state provision of social welfare, including the ramifications for equitable and sustainable access to social services, accountability for citizens, and state capacity. The authors do not assume that non-state providers will surpass the performance of weak, inefficient, or sometimes corrupt states but instead offer a systematic analysis of a wide spectrum of non-state actors in a variety of contexts around the world, including sectarian political parties, faith-based organizations, community-based organizations, family networks, informal brokers, and private firms.
Author: Tomasz Inglot
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139472879
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
A comparative-historical study of welfare states in the former communist region of East Central Europe. Inglot analyzes almost one hundred years of expansion of social insurance programs across different political regimes. He places these programs in a larger political and socioeconomic context, which includes the most recent developments since the advent of democracy. Based on this research, he argues that despite apparent similarities the welfare states of East Central Europe, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic and Slovakia since 1993), Poland, and Hungary have pursued distinct historical paths of development and change. He examines the highly unusual evolution of these welfare states in detail, tracing alternating periods of growth and retrenchment/reform, which he links to political and economic crises under communist rule. Inglot uses this comparative analysis of welfare systems to examine the continued influence of history over the politics and policies of the social safety nets in Eastern Europe.
Author: Pieter Vanhuysse
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9637326790
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192
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Book Description
Despite dramatic increases in poverty, unemployment, and social inequalities, the Central and Eastern European transitions from communism to market democracy in the 1990s have been remarkably peaceful. This book proposes a new explanation for this unexpected political quiescence. It shows how reforming governments in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have been able to prevent massive waves of strikes and protests by the strategic use of welfare state programs such as pensions and unemployment benefits. Divide and Pacify explains how social policies were used to prevent massive job losses with softening labor market policies, or to split up highly aggrieved groups of workers in precarious jobs by sending some of them onto unemployment benefits and many others onto early retirement and disability pensions. From a narrow economic viewpoint, these policies often appeared to be immensely costly or irresponsibly populist. Yet a more inclusive social-scientific perspective can shed new light on these seemingly irrational policies by pointing to deeper political motives and wider sociological consequences. Divide and Pacify contains a provocative thesis about the manner in which political strategy was used to consolidate democracy in post-communist Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Pieter Vanhuysse develops a tight argument emphasizing the strategic use of welfare and unemployment compensation policies by a government to nip potential collective action against it in the bud. By breaking up social networks that might otherwise facilitate protest, through unemployment and induced early retirement, governments were able to survive otherwise difficult economic circumstances. This novel argument linking economics, politics, sociology, and demography should stimulate wide-ranging debate about the strategic uses of social policy.
Author: I. Collier
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9780333738450
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 206
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Book Description
Social policy in East and West finds itself today in the middle of a fundamental transition. The former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the successor states to the former Soviet Union are attempting to create the institutions needed for a modern market economy and a modern democratic welfare state. At the same time, the mature welfare states of Europe are struggling to solve the contemporary financial crisis of their systems of social entitlements. Because of fundamental economic and demographic trends, these systems will become increasingly difficult to sustain over the coming decades. The contributors overwhelmingly agree that it would be mistaken policy to simply copy the institutions of Western welfare states to the Eastern economies in transition. Instead one can learn much from the experience gathered over the past half century in Western welfare states.
