Welfare and ‘Ill-Fare’ Systems in Central-Eastern Europe

Abstract

There are huge variations in the political structure and in the public policies of the post-state-socialist countries, called hereafter ‘transition’ countries. The view widely shared in the early 1990s that all of them would pass from dictatorship to democracy and from state planning to a market system in a relatively short time, proved to be oversimplified for all, and widely off the mark for quite a few. The countries in the ‘western belt’ of Eastern Europe, in the region called (for varied historical reasons) Central-Eastern Europe (CEE) have come closest to this model. This chapter considers the whole Eastern European region, but focuses particularly on the following Central-Eastern European countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, and Slovakia.