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Purpose -The purpose of this introduction to the special issue is to give an overview of the key aspects of the governance of activation policies as discussed in the existing literature. It explains the focus and contribution of this special issue and provides a brief summary of the main findings in the individual articles. Design/methodology/approach -In this special issue the comparative analysis of the key aspects of governance of activation policies like centralization/decentralization, new public management, marketization and network governance is covered, accompanied by an assessment of the role of implementation conditions in shaping the real trends of governance reforms of activation policies. Further, the effects of governance reforms and the influence of EU governance on the dynamics of national activation policies are discussed. This comparative analysis leads to a typology of the "worlds of governance" of activation policies in Europe. Findings -All the countries show certain comparable converging trends in the reforms of governance of activation, although a closer look helps us determine the shape of increasingly different patterns of governance in several respects. In spite of this variety, another general finding is the common discrepancy between aims and effects: the key explanation involves implementation failures. Three governance regimes may be distinguished in the EU countries: committed marketizers, modernizers and slow modernizers. Originality/value -This paper suggests a new typology of governance regimes.

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In this article we analyse the evolution of the Czech welfare state and we examine the factors explaining its path. We show that although the Czech welfare regime exhibits a 'mixed profile' that includes conservative and universalist elements, it is increasingly moving in a more liberal, residualist direction -not because of conscious steps but rather through decay. Governments have often zig-zagged in their policies and resorted to symbolic reforms at times rather than implementing ideologically based, consistent policies. We argue that historical and sociological institutionalism combined with a social-capital approach can explain this decay better than the more common arguments about economic pressures combined with ideological hegemony or the protest-avoidance strategy. In particular, the social capital approach adds to our institutional framework by explaining why cutbacks in welfare programmes have not met much opposition, even though public opinion surveys consistently show support for more generous welfare policies, and why policies have deviated so much from political rhetoric.

This paper tests several hypotheses to explain the link between satisfaction with democracy and welfare state performance. In conducting multilevel analysis we use data on the contextual and institutional conditions including the welfare state regimes as well as data from European Social Survey 2012 special module on democracy. Our results show that a discrepancy between the desired policy goal and perceived policy outcome of the welfare state (policy deficit) influences the perceptions of citizens of how democracy works. In particular, social policies aimed at reducing poverty correlates positively with one's satisfaction with democracy.

This article analyses the pattern of poverty and social exclusion in the Czech Republic and the impact of social policy on this pattern. The analysis is mostly based on data from the Czech Survey on Social Conditions of Households (  ;  ,  respondents); Eurostat data provide a benchmark for making international comparisons. The poverty rate in the Czech Republic is among the lowest in Europe. On the other hand, material deprivation, as well as concentration of poverty within specific population groups, is high, with the unemployed facing the highest risk of poverty. Social policy measures in effect reinforce this pattern: while the benefit system is highly redistributive and effectively eliminates income poverty among households of employed persons and among pensioners, incomes of persons outside paid employment are protected less effectively. Labour market policy measures are insufficient in scope and inadequate in targeting groups which are facing the highest risk of labour market exclusion and poverty. We argue that although this practice is effective at present, it is not sustainable in the long term.

This article asks the question of why some social policies can be path dependent, while others are not, even if the country goes through what clearly seems to be a ‘critical juncture’ caused by exogenous shocks. We argue that in the Czech Republic labour market policies represent a clear break with the past, while healthcare and family policies have been path dependent to various degrees. There are several reasons. First, during the first years of the transition policymakers gave greater priority to labour market issues. Second, labour market policies were less constrained than the other policy areas, both because the government had to create new institutions in this area rather than rely on old ones and because these new institutions had not yet built up popular support as the old institutions had. Third, labour policy was not as influenced by policy legacies.