This article is divided into four parts. First there is a summary of the social policy of the old state-socialist regimes, some description of the legacy of social problems which they bequeathed to those making the transition to capitalism and a brief summary of the major social costs of the early years of the transition process. Second, the broad social-policy strategies of the new governments of Eastern Europe and the former USSR are reviewed as they have attempted to manage both the legacy of social problems from the past and the new social costs of transition. Third, in more detail developments in five specific fields are described: levels of public expenditure on social welfare; income maintenance policy; health and medical care; housing; and education. The article concludes by attempting to explain these changes, asking whether the policy changes have been motivated by a perceived need to reduce social provision, with a view to becoming more competitive within the global economy.
This article demonstrates that the making of post-communist social policy in Eastern Europe and parts of the former Soviet Union is being influenced by a number of international agencies. The implicit and explicit social policy advice being offered by the European Union, the Council of Europe, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the World Bank, to the countries of the region, is described and evaluated. The policy thinking of the Bank is given particular emphasis. Brief reference to the role of the International Labour Organisation and the International Monetary Fund, in this regard, is also made. The advice, both at the general level of the broad orientation of social policy and at the specific level of social security and social assistance of the agencies, is compared. It is suggested that the making of post-communist social policy is a testing ground for the future of social policy elsewhere in the industrialised world. This future, in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, is being influenced by the global social policy discourse that now exists within and between the global agencies studied here. This discourse is mapped and reflects both existing social policy orientations (liberalism, conservatism, social democracy) and the new post-Fordist social policy orientations of social liberalism, as well as that based on the concept of a citizenship income.
This article reviews the conceptual and analytical contribution of one strand of 'global social policy studies' since the mid-1990s. It outlines some of the strengths and weaknesses of the core conceptual basis of the approach acknowledging that the theoretical aspects have remained more implicit than explicit in many core texts. The article advances the case for using the 'Agency, Structure, Institution and Discourse' (ASID) approach as a framework within which to advance the analysis of the formation and transformation of 'global social policy'. The recent development of the ILO and UN policy on advancing social protection floors is then used to illustrate how the ASID approach might be applied to an actual global social policy change.
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