Negotiating Welfare in Postcommunist States

During the postcommunist transition, inherited welfare states came under intense pressures to retrench and restructure. Most governments initiated reform projects based on a liberal paradigm of reduced entitlements and social sector privatization, moving welfare away from the state toward the market. Yet the patterns of reform diverged in puzzling ways, producing distinct trajectories of change and outcomes. Case studies of three postcommunist states show that the political influence of societal and state-based welfare stakeholders was a key factor in welfare state change. Where political institutions gave stakeholders access, they moderated reforms during recession and sustained a predominant state role in welfare after economic recovery. Where stakeholders were weak, reformist executives retrenched and restructured with little constraint.