This article examines participation in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in Kosovo based on a recent survey and administrative data. Kosovo’s ECEC policy aims to provide education and care for children aged 0 to 6 through an approach consisting of highly targeted public services for more vulnerable social groups, while expecting the rest to rely on the market or the family. It also provides a universal, public (2.5 hours a day) school preparatory programme for children aged 5-6 years. Availability of ECEC services has been rising, but remains well below the levels of the countries in the region. New services are increasingly coming through a market-based provision which leaves large social groups such as low-income families, rural families, parents with lower educational status and other socio-economically disadvantaged parents worse off. Since ECEC is considered highly relevant for children’s personal development and success in school, as well as for female participation in the labour market, the findings suggest that the current policy contributes towards cementing and furthering social and gender inequalities in the long run. In the absence of more comprehensive public services and other supportive family policy measures, Kosovo maintains a strong implicit familialistic policy with a weak potential to contribute to women’s employment. Key words: Kosovo, ECEC, defamilialisation, familialism, privatisation.
This study examined: (i) Kosovo's social policy's poverty and inequality outcomes in recent history, namely during Yugoslav self‐management socialism (1952–1989), the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) (1999–2008) and independence (2008 onwards), and (ii) the impact of local politics in the more recent trajectory of social policy. The study shows that the poverty rate after the war (1999) is significantly lower than it was during socialism, but that there is persistent high and deepening Gini inequality and social exclusion. Transfers and taxes of the residual‐liberal policy have reduced more pretransfer–pretax inequality, and especially poverty, compared with self‐management's insurance‐dominated socialism, but their effectiveness is declining due to the policy's underlying long‐term, pro‐market logic and its increasing particularism with respect to short‐term transfers. The article argues that the main local political cleavages have originated from self‐management socialism's extensive stratification. These cleavages matter in distributive conflicts, and they mattered also during the UNMIK period by easing the pathway for the unprecedented influence international organisations have had on policy formation.
This paper analyses social protection expenditure, its financing and its correlation with redistribution effects in the European Union (EU) candidate and potential candidate countries from the Western Balkans – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Serbia. Although social expenditure in the Western Balkans varies between countries in terms of the extent and functions, in general, it is growing and concentrates on the elderly population. The expenditure is strongly redistributive towards old age, but is less efficient in reducing extensive child and working-age poverty. From an intergenerational perspective, despite various recent improvements, it remains significantly unbalanced compared to the EU. The expenditure reflects the design of social rights that have been shaped by the legacy of socialism and war, local politics, and international organisations perhaps more than by the impact of economic resources and aging.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the arrival in power, for the first time, of a left-wing majority in Kosovo. Nowhere in the Western Balkans and Europe was the impact of the pandemic on politics so salient and extensive. The power shift created an unlikely opportunity for progressive social policy change. However, as shown by policy responses during the 1st year of the pandemic, substantial policy change is still uncertain. Although political parties have begun to matter more in policy choices, expansive change is constrained by the broader unfavourable conjuncture involving, among others, the existing neo-liberal welfare regime, its feedback on policy learning, mobile right-wing actors with influence in state institutions and global organisations such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and European Union – all of which may rather favour the status quo.
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