Social policy in east central Europe: Major trends in the twentieth century

Abstract

East Central European countries and post-Soviet states have a common communist legacy, because of which they are looked at as countries with markedly different political and welfare cultures compared to ‘Western’ capitalist democracies.1 The difference in the historical legacy has caused many authors to group these countries into one category of ‘post-Soviet’ or ‘post-communist’ states. The systematic analysis of the commonalities and differences of their welfare history has only started recently (Inglot, 2003, 2008; Tomka, 2003, 2005; Cerami, 2006), but these studies have mainly neglected the history of family policies in the region. Recent development of family policies and gender have attracted considerable attention (Pascall and Kwak, 2005, Fodor et al., 2002; Szelewa and Polakowski, 2008) but the historical roots of current family policies is a new field to be explored.