The Reforms of the Welfare States

Abstract

Given the pressure exerted by the measures adopted under the “Washington Consensus,” one might have expected the introduction in the 1990s of a massive reform of the welfare states, along the lines of Chilean-type liberalization, as implemented in the 1970s and 1980s. Here again, however, as with the reforms of property rights, the national centers asserted their sovereignty. Globalized models, together with European prescriptions, were widely adapted to fit in with national trajectories. A number of interest groups came together to thwart the wholesale adoption of programs developed at other times and in other cultural spaces. And because the European Union is not very demanding in this regard, on account of its desire not to see its own high level of protection dented, it allowed the international monetary institutions free rein to exert pressure, without the final architectures arrived at actually giving the impression of a totally liberalized Central and Eastern Europe. Far from it, indeed. A variety of eventual patterns predominated. This is what we intend to demonstrate in this chapter, after analyzing the prevailing political contexts at the point when the decision to reform social systems was made. In many places continuities combined with sizeable innovations, though they never produced a typical Eastern European model of a kind that might be added to the various existing typologies.¹