Epilogue: Lessons learnt and open questions

Abstract

The remarkable collection of country studies as well as studies of issue areas in social policy that Cerami and Vanhuysse have assembled in this volume marks a step forward in charting the terra incognita of welfare states in the new member states which joined the EU in 2004 and 2007. Apart from the one and a half small Mediterranean islands of Malta and the southern part of Cyprus, all new member states share the quality of having emerged, after 1989, from the economic, social and political regime of state socialism. One of the recurrent themes throughout the chapters of this volume is the following question: To what extent can the evolution of CEE welfare states be accounted for in terms of path-dependency and the continuity of state socialism as well as those institutional patterns that were adopted in the region during the interwar period - and to what extent do we encounter path-departures that were conditioned by the two dominant novelties of (a) the breakdown of state socialism with the subsequent deep transformation crisis and (b) the accession of the new members to the European Union and its patterns of capitalist democracy, as well as the conditionalities governing Eastern Enlargement. In dealing with these questions, the authors share an analytical frame that dominates much of the academic literature on current affairs in CEE. Stated at the most general level, this frame suggests that what we see happening in the region must be accounted for in terms of a joint outcome of ‘the past’ and ‘the West’.