The new politics of welfare in post-socialist Central Eastern Europe

This dissertation explores the evolution of welfare systems in post-socialist countries. Utilizing a range of data on social policy legislation and outcomes across countries, the author shows the extent to which post-socialist welfare systems vary in their design and effects. Variation is demonstrated using six indicators that measure: the extent of universality of social benefits, active policies, effective redistribution, wage-based financing of social programs, benefit levels and familization. Cross-country variation has occurred in spite of the common experiences of opening their economies to international competition and in spite of political pressure from international organizations and the European Union to adopt similar, pre-packaged policy agendas. To explain this variation, the author uses case studies of unemployment and family policies in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, to argue that domestic policy actors in each country make the critical decisions about welfare reform. Comparative case analyses show that the direction of welfare reform in the post-communist countries was largely set in place during the few years following regime change in each of them.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Political Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Brown, Dana L., Ph. D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Richard M. Locke.

• Political Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/33682

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/33682