Social policy, communism and post-communism

The context of this book is the social and political construction of anti-poverty welfare programmes in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and all that it comprises: governments, policies, laws, benefits and of course people, as potential and effective beneficiaries (to speak in very broad terms indeed and without mentioning many of its other complexities).

In this study we shall deal with the topics of policy design, the welfare state, institutional change and poverty, all of which simultaneously encompass the economic, social and political-institutional spheres of the transition of former communist countries. As such, an examination of social policy design in Central Eastern Europe must necessarily deal with the issue of post-communism. Should post-communist welfare states be analysed in terms of welfare states in other European countries or are they significantly different from those of Western Europe? Are the socialist legacies of post-communist countries more relevant (to their present and future) than their transformation over the past twenty years? Can we use the same analytical categories to compare post-communist and Western countries and their welfare systems?

Despite lengthy scientific discussion over post-communism as a reliable general analytical category (see, for example, Gill, 2002; Humphrey, 2002), a consensus over how to define the ‘post-communist’ welfare state has remained elusive. Nevertheless, the distinctive character of the welfare state in the countries of the former communist bloc is, for the most part, acknowledged by the existing literature on the subject.

The first element of differentiation from other Western countries regards, of course, the political and institutional transition. After the collapse of communism in 1989 Central Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union experienced the end of dictatorship and regime change. As a consequence, new governments not only had to deal with the transition to democracy, but they also had to face the dismantlement of the politics and institutions of their countries in a context where ‘virtually everything was affected by the long arm of the past’: political parties, national identities, democratic institutions, civil society organisations and political authority all had to be completely reconstructed (Elster et al, 1998: 19). This political and institutional ‘tabula rasa’ – as some scholars maintain – was a watershed moment which was unprecedented in the contemporary world.