The Making of Post-communist Social Policy: The Role of International Agencies

Abstract

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.

Welfare state evolution in Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland: Towards a new paradigm?

“…In the case of CEE, there was a key epistemic community related particularly to international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF [Deacon 1997;Stubbs, 2003]. The World Bank was particularly influent in promoting the introduction of three pillar pensions, involving partial privatisation [Müller, 2003].…”

The IFIs and Labour Reform in Post Communist Economies

“…Most tellingly social democracy may be profoundly affected, and mutates to what has been described as 'social liberalism' in the field of social and industrial policy. The previous accommodation between state, capital, and labour is tipped to the advantage of capital at the expense of labour and is accompanied by a withdrawal of the state from many of its previous welfare activities (Bourdieu, 1998;Deacon & Hulse, 1997;Jessop, 2002a). Some argue that this combination of ideological imposition, power in practice, and the consequent global institutional architecture consolidates a new dominance of finance based capitalism (Cammack, 2002;Moore, 2005;Soederberg, 2002).…”

Romania: Childbearing metamorphosis within a changing context

“…The introduction of means-tested benefits such as social assistance and the majority of family benefits (i.e., supplementary allowance, single parent allowance, and the minimum guaranteed income etc.) are the result of attempts by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (Deacon and Hulse 1997;Deacon 2000). Both institutions influenced the Romanian political regimes from 1992 onwards.…”