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Small Transformations
The Politics of Welfare Reform - East and West
Herausgeber: Kovacs, Janos M.
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East-Central Europe is about to bring its welfare reforms to the European Union. Nevertheless, in the course of the Accession, one could hardly fix the European standards of social policy or examine to what degree the newcomers may have approached them. Evidently, there has always been a variety of welfare regimes in the EU. Moreover, today's experts in post-communist countries do not find stable policies and institutional arrangements in the West but rather another reform process, the "domestication" of the classical welfare states. True, the general trends are not dissimilar: partial retrenc...
East-Central Europe is about to bring its welfare reforms to the European Union. Nevertheless, in the course of the Accession, one could hardly fix the European standards of social policy or examine to what degree the newcomers may have approached them. Evidently, there has always been a variety of welfare regimes in the EU. Moreover, today's experts in post-communist countries do not find stable policies and institutional arrangements in the West but rather another reform process, the "domestication" of the classical welfare states. True, the general trends are not dissimilar: partial retrenchment, decentralization, marketisation and privatisation of public welfare services, as well as an upsurge of the voluntary sector, are the main characteristic features of regulating welfare on both sides of the former Iron Curtain.
These issues are addressed by the authors of this volume, leading representatives of their professions, in an unprecedented way. In avoiding the convenient cliché of "Western invention" versus "Eastern imitation", they provide a great many original results in abstract and empirical analysis, and engage in sharp discussions on the virtues of the third sector, the privatisation of the pension system or the role of the trade unions. And nothing demonstrates the end of communism better than the fact that the frontlines between them usually intersect the Yalta divide.
The book is based on a long-term cooperative venture of Western and East-European scholars in the framework of IWM's research program on the Social Consequences of Economic Transformation in East-Central Europe (SOCO).
These issues are addressed by the authors of this volume, leading representatives of their professions, in an unprecedented way. In avoiding the convenient cliché of "Western invention" versus "Eastern imitation", they provide a great many original results in abstract and empirical analysis, and engage in sharp discussions on the virtues of the third sector, the privatisation of the pension system or the role of the trade unions. And nothing demonstrates the end of communism better than the fact that the frontlines between them usually intersect the Yalta divide.
The book is based on a long-term cooperative venture of Western and East-European scholars in the framework of IWM's research program on the Social Consequences of Economic Transformation in East-Central Europe (SOCO).