Eastern Europe

When the communist regimes fell a variety of hybrid types of policies developed. Not only do policies differ between countries, but also the types of policies differ within single countries, as some social policy areas might have, for example, more liberal-residualist characteristics, while other policy areas in the same country might have more conservative-Bismarckian aspects. For example, in the area of childcare, most of the post-communist countries provide nearly universal daycare coverage for children three to five years old, while implementing three-year parental leave along the conservative model, which encourages mothers to leave the labour market for long periods. The development of post-communist social policies has been influenced mainly by a combination of path dependency (often with universalist and conservative elements), a discourse dominated by market-liberal hegemonic tendencies, and the desire of large portions of the population to have relatively generous welfare policies. The one area where international organizations seem to have played a major role is pension reforms. Path dependency makes its impact from two stages. First there are the developments from

the pre-communist era, which include the policy legacies as well as the actual institutional arrangements. In most cases the pre-communist policies, especially in countries of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, had a strong Bismarckian influence, although policy areas that were not highly prioritized were more residualist. In addition, countries with weaker state capacities also had less generous welfare policies than their neighbours. Even countries that had not been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, such as Romania and Bulgaria, still looked to the Bismarckian model for inspiration. When the communists came to power in Central and Eastern Europe in 1948, they generally

introduced more universalistic policies in the beginning. However, they did not simply copy the Soviet Union, as they had to build upon pre-existing institutions. In addition, their universalism differed in many ways from the Scandinavian social democratic welfare states. For example, even if most policies did not have means testing based on incomes, policies often gave discretionary powers to local Party and state officials, who could use political criteria in making decisions. Some Bismarckian traditions also continued, such as the idea of giving different benefits based on one’s profession, although the professions that were given priority changed somewhat under communist rule. Another conservative policy common among the communist-led regimes was the introduction of flat-rate benefits. Even though such policies do not correspond to the Bismarckian notion of insurance-based benefits tied to different professional groups, they are ‘conservative’

in the sense of leading to moderate rates of decommodification – they pay more than residualist, liberal, means tested programmes, but much less than the social democratic types of generous, decommodifying, insurance-based benefits that replace most of one’s former income. They are also conservative in the sense that when flat-rate policies are applied to the carrying sector (parental leave, caring for the sick and elderly), flat-rate benefits encourage women to do the caring rather than men, since given the fact that men most often have higher incomes than the woman in the family, men are likely to avoid missing work to care for family on the grounds that the loss of family income would be too high. During the 1960s the communist regimes generally started to modify their policies once they

gave up their ideas of radically transforming society. Their reforms from this era onward tended to go in a more conservative direction, although sometimes also in a liberal-residualist direction (by introducing more means-tested programmes). In general the communist regimes also backed down from their original goals of emancipating women and instead started to perceive women more as mothers and less as workers, thus shaping policies in a manner that gave them greater responsibility for caring for family members (including longer maternity leave, measures to induce them to take care of sick children, parents, and spouses, etc.). The policies that they chose were often influenced by policy legacies dating back to pre-communist times. When the communist regimes lost power, the new governments had to focus first on establishing

a safety net and getting the labour market to function. These policies were formulated rather quickly and given top priority. Policy makers were highly influenced by the market-liberal discourse that was become rather hegemonic in the West, but the policies were generally much more pragmatic than traditional market-liberal policies and to some extent based on the idea of ‘divide and pacify’ (Vanhuysse, 2006), in which the weaker social groups were divided by policies so that they would not be able to unite around their interests and protest against market reforms. In the areas with longer social policy traditions, the post-communist regimes were bound by higher degrees of path dependency as there were greater entrenched interests as well as stronger policy legacies. The main exception eventually was pension reform, as international organizations had great influence there in promoting the three-level model. Even though many of the policies developed in the early post-communist period were much more generous than traditional residualist policies, benefit levels often were not indexed to keep up with inflation. This brought about a trend toward ‘liberalism by decay’ (Saxonberg and Sirovátka, 2009b). This chapter now proceeds by examining the pre-communist, the communist, and the post-

communist developments of social policy in Eastern Europe.