Postcommunist Welfare States

Linda J. Cook

Published by Cornell University Press 2013

Postcommunist Welfare States

Reform Politics in Russia and Eastern Europe

Linda J. Cook

https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801460098

Overview
Contents

About this book

In the early 1990s, the countries of the former Soviet Bloc faced an urgent need to reform the systems by which they delivered broad, basic social welfare to their citizens. Inherited systems were inefficient and financially unsustainable. Linda J. Cook here explores the politics and policy of social welfare from 1990 to 2004 in the Russian Federation, Poland, Hungary, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.

Most of these countries, she shows, tried to institute reforms based on a liberal paradigm of reduced entitlements and subsidies, means-testing, and privatization. But these proposals provoked opposition from pro-welfare interests, and the politics of negotiating change varied substantially from one political arena to another. In Russia, for example, liberalizing reform was blocked for a decade. Only as Vladimir Putin rose to power did the country change its inherited welfare system.

Cook finds that the impact of economic pressures on welfare was strongly mediated by domestic political factors, including the level of democratization and balance of pro- and anti-reform political forces. Postcommunist welfare politics throughout Russia and Eastern Europe, she shows, are marked by the large role played by bureaucratic welfare stakeholders who were left over from the communist period and, in weak states, by the development of informal processes in social sectors.

Author information

Linda J. Cook is Professor of Political Science at Brown University. She is the author of The Soviet Social Contract and Why It Failed: Welfare Policy and Workers' Politics from Brezhnev to Yeltsin and Labor and Liberalization: Trade Unions in the New Russia.

Reviews

"Linda J. Cook is the leading expert on the subject of welfare state policies and politics in Russia and in the postcommunist sphere more generally. In Postcommunist Welfare States, she argues that political, rather than economic or social, factors determine the effectiveness of policy reforms. Her detailed discussion of a wide range of social policies is a tremendous asset and makes this book a valuable and lasting resource."—Thomas Remington, Emory University

"In Postcommunist Welfare States, Linda J. Cook offers an innovative application of welfare state theory to explain the variable trajectories of welfare states in Russia and the other postcommunist states of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Her mastery of the political economic contexts and experiences as well as social policy changes in these systems is impressive."—Duane Swank, Marquette University

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Figures and Tables Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xiii
Introduction: Welfare States and Postcommunist Transitions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Old Welfare State Structures and Reform Strategies Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	31
2. Non-negotiated Liberalization: Decentralizing Russia’s Welfare State and Moving It Off-Budget Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
3. Contested Liberalization: Russia’s Politics of Polarization and Informalization Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	99
4. Welfare Reform in Putin’s Russia: Negotiating Liberalization within the Elite Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
5. Comparing Postcommunist Welfare State Politics: Poland, Hungary, Kazakhstan, and Belarus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193
Conclusion: Negotiating Welfare in Democratic and Authoritarian Transitions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	239
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 288
Illustrations
- Tables: 37
- Other: 37 tables, 5 charts/graphs, 3 line drawings
Keywords: Labor History; Soviet & East European History

eBook

Published: January 15, 2011
ISBN: 9780801460098