Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Welfare States in East Central Europe, 1919–2004
- Introduction: Understanding Past and Present Social Policy Development in East Central Europe
- 1 The Welfare State in East Central Europe: A Conceptual and Theoretical Reconsideration
- 2 Institutional Legacies: State Building, Regime Change, and the Development of National Welfare States in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, 1919–1989
- 3 Policy Legacies and Welfare States under Communism: Cycles of Social Policy Expansion and Retrenchment in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, 1945–1989
- 4 Historical Legacies, Welfare State Institutions, and the Politics of Social Policy Reforms in Postcommunist East Central Europe, 1989–2004
- Conclusion: Postcommunist “Emergency” Welfare States and Theoretical Exploration of Institutional Change and Social Policy Development
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Policy Legacies and Welfare States under Communism: Cycles of Social Policy Expansion and Retrenchment in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, 1945–1989
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Welfare States in East Central Europe, 1919–2004
- Introduction: Understanding Past and Present Social Policy Development in East Central Europe
- 1 The Welfare State in East Central Europe: A Conceptual and Theoretical Reconsideration
- 2 Institutional Legacies: State Building, Regime Change, and the Development of National Welfare States in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, 1919–1989
- 3 Policy Legacies and Welfare States under Communism: Cycles of Social Policy Expansion and Retrenchment in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, 1945–1989
- 4 Historical Legacies, Welfare State Institutions, and the Politics of Social Policy Reforms in Postcommunist East Central Europe, 1989–2004
- Conclusion: Postcommunist “Emergency” Welfare States and Theoretical Exploration of Institutional Change and Social Policy Development
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
POLICY LEGACIES AND THE “COMMUNIST” WELFARE STATES IN EAST CENTRAL EUROPE
Our cross-national comparison of institutional development of the Czechoslovak, Polish, and Hungarian welfare states revealed the significance of institutional legacies of the imperial period during their early, formative years. It has also illustrated the ways in which these legacies are reproduced over time under the influence of national “blueprints” and in conjunction with major changes in political regime. This chapter presents a longitudinal analysis of the historical development of the major social insurance programs, pensions, sickness/maternity benefits, family allowances, and child-care payments in the three countries during the communist period. It aims to further expand our inquiry to uncover relevant continuities and discontinuities in government decision making. Moreover, this kind of disaggregated examination of historical trajectories of social insurance benefits enables us to better map, analyze, and compare individual “developmental paths” of the East Central European welfare states in a broad economic and sociopolitical context. These systems of social protection seem to have evolved in distinctive stages of retrenchment and expansion that often corresponded to the cycles of major crises of the polity and economy; as such their development contrasts with the conventional, linear trajectory of western welfare states, that is, one leading from the common “imperial” origins through periods of rapid postwar expansion to retrenchment or reform in the post-industrial era of economic austerity and globalism.
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- Welfare States in East Central Europe, 1919–2004 , pp. 119 - 210Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008
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