Globalization and the Future of Welfare States in the Post-Communist East-Central European Countries

How has globalization influenced welfare state development in the post-Communist states? Since 1989 the leading east-central European accession states, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, have experienced radically different welfare state developments from their neighbors in the former Soviet Union. The first part of this chapter analyzes the “Europe effect” that we find to be the source of this differentiation and argues that globalization has not had a uniform impact on post-Communist welfare states. Rather, the effect of globalization differs greatly, depending on a country’s position in the international economy and geopolitical relations. We demonstrate that countries closer to the