Borbála Kovács

‘Welfare States’ and Social Policies in Eastern Europe and the Former USSR: Where Informality Fits In?

Since the end of socialism scholars have been debating whether post-socialist welfare policies in Eastern Europe and the former USSR could be considered converging into Western European patterns, and possibly fit one of Esping-Andersens (1990) welfare state classifications, or whether they should be considered an exception or sui generis and therefore studied beyond these categories. This article is informed by post-2008 crisis material and contends that neither of the above interpretative frameworks is appropriate because they both miss the role of informal welfare provision and informal renegotiations of the scope of welfare policies. Going beyond the transitional-alternative paradigm, this article situates itself in the structure–agency debate in defining how welfare policies are renegotiated by domestic and local actors and come to form a partially new system. Rather than seeing the former socialist region as an exception, it suggests that the very debate about the welfare state and welfare policies should be revisited in order to consider also informality as a major element of social policy-making.

Managing access to full-time public daycare and preschool services in Romania: Planfulness, cream-skimming and ‘interventions’

This article engages with differently qualified parents’ experiences of and success in accessing public full-time early childhood education and care (ECEC) services in a Romanian urban context to illustrate the ways in which post-socialist welfare states are transformed not only from above, through formal rules, but also from below, through informal practices. Through the exploration of the narratives of both parents and managers, the article finds that parental planfulness, qualification-based differences in demand for full-time places and formal rules of access are insufficient to explain clear-cut qualification- and income-based differences in access. The article describes the crucial importance of hidden, informal cream-skimming strategies that daycare and preschool managers employ in the pre-enrolment phase and of the informal tactics of relying on ‘interventions’ with which unsuccessful parents respond to managers’ refusals to enrol. In the context of full-time place shortages, managerial autonomy in enrolment and insufficient institutional budgets, public ECEC institutions engage in hidden processes of redistribution through selective access, favouring well-educated, high-income parents and their children.

Introduction: The Failure and Future of the Welfare State in Post-socialism

Debates on the post-socialist welfare state evolved in two main directions. While some scholars have maintained that they would eventually converge with Western European patterns, some others have pointed at the need of a more ‘particularist’ approach, seeking to demonstrate that post-socialist states might follow a different and non-traditional path, individually or as a region in terms of welfare provision. Our current work is an attempt to contribute to the debate on the direction of post-socialist welfare state adaptation by engaging with corruption and welfare state/public sector failure in post-socialist spaces. In particular, emphasis is put on the tactics and strategies used by public workers and citizens to cope with incomplete and inadequate public social welfare provision. Rooted in different disciplinary schools, and making use of diverse methodological and theoretical approaches, the papers of this special issue provide further evidence to rechart the relationship between the public welfare sector, citizens and the current economic transition, a commonality that allows us to point at alternatives to the capitalist model that for some time has been seen as the only option. In line with our previous works, in this special issue we explore the possibility that informality and formality are complementary or that informality may ‘replace’ formal processes and structures. In other words, where the welfare state does not penetrate, welfare might be spread also through informal channels and it might redefine the very dynamics underpinning of a society.

The totality of caring

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to formulate a conceptually and empirically grounded new understanding of childcare arrangements for cross-national and longitudinal micro-level empirical research by drawing on theoretical discussions about the social, spatial and temporal dimensions of embodied childcare and empirical data in the form of parental narratives from a Romanian qualitative study. Design/methodology/approach – The paper builds on a critique of an extensive body of empirical literature on the micro-level organisation of childcare and the thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with Romanian parents. The paper combines a critical literature review with findings from a qualitative study on childcare. Findings – The paper formulates a new understanding of household-level childcare arrangements that is context-insensitive, yet reflects the social, spatial and temporal concerns that the organisation of embodied childcare often raises. The paper expands on six real-life care arrangements in Ro...

“States” of informality in post-socialist Europe (and beyond)

Abstract This article explores the main debates and works that underpin the theoretical conceptualization of this special issue and documents the exponential growth of literature on informality both globally and, especially, in post-socialist spaces. In spite of this growth, informality is still relatively understudied considering how widespread and significant a phenomenon it has become. In particular, if we go beyond a merely economistic view of the phenomenon, one could argue that an understanding of informality explains a variety of social responses and the number of cases where we have been able to apply an informality framework is perhaps very telling. Debates remain too bounded by one of two paradigms: either recourse to geographic particularism or exceptionalism or ongoing debates on transition or transformation (the appropriateness of ‘posting’ socialism). To break with this attitude, we suggest with this special issue that study of informality needs to build into itself a middle-field theory explaining its endurance which acknowledges both specificities of social action arising from common(ish) pasts and experience of change after 1989/91 leading to translatable presents, as well as these societies’ positioning as mediating sites of neocapitalism between the Global North and South, with such a theory being a key articulation of the multiple modernities thesis.

Adjusting social welfare and social policy in Central and Eastern Europe: growth, crisis and recession

Despite the shared history of socialist welfare state adaptation, there is consensus among scholars that Central and Eastern European (CEE) welfare states do not conform to either a putative post-socialist welfare state type or to Esping-Andersen’s (1990) welfare regime typology developed for advanced capitalist welfare states (Deacon 2000; Fenger 2007; Aidukaite 2009; Inglot 2009). This is not surprising considering that welfare states in CEE are but a few years younger than their Western neighbours (Haggard and Kaufman, 2008; Inglot 2008; Mares and Carnes 2009) and that their historical evolution – despite their Bismarckian foundations, the homogenizing influence of the soviet model and the emergency, ad hoc and inconsistent institutional adjustments during the first two decades of post-socialism – has been as complex and diverse as that of their advanced capitalist counterparts (Inglot 2008, 2009; Cook 2010). This diversity is observable not only in terms of variations in the salience of institutional legacies from different historical periods across welfare domains, the timing, dynamics and direction of welfare reforms after the dissolution of state socialism and welfare state size, but also variations in the resulting architectures of mixed economies of welfare across policy domains and in the structure of inequalities and social outcomes. We agree, therefore, with Cerami’s (2009, p. 51) assessment that welfare states in the European post-socialist and post-soviet space are best understood as ‘unique hybrids’, moreover, likely on diverging paths of development (see also Cook 2010; Deacon and Standing 1993; Orenstein and Haas 2002; Potucek 2008; Haggard and Kaufman 2008). As such, these welfare states may be grouped together at best only on the most general grounds and without sensitivity to differences in magnitude and kind. The shared Bismarckian and soviet-inspired institutional legacies are one broad similarity which might invite arguments of greater similarity than dissimilarity, although Inglot (2008) convincingly outlines the institutional variations that persisted despite these. The experience of welfare state adjustment during the 1990s, characterized by ad hoc, emergency institutional and policy transformations (Nunberg 1999; Deacon 2000, p. 149; Sotiropoulos and Pop 2007; Inglot 2009) and a highly volatile, cyclical expand-then-retrench, stop-and-go reform process during this period (Sotiropoulos et al. 2003; Inglot 2009; Szikra and Tomka 2009; Cook 2010) may also be cited as another shared feature of CEE welfare states, although again, scholars have highlighted variations certainly in degree (see Cerami and Vanhuysse 2009). Those emphasizing similarities over differences could also cite a propensity towards cushioning social policy adjustments in the early stages of post-socialist welfare state reform, although selective in scope, followed by path-departing institutional innovations during the late 1990s and 2000s (Vanhuysse 2006; Cerami and Stănescu 2009; Cook 2010) and the role played by international organizations in designing policy options

Informality ‘in spite of’ or ‘beyond’ the state: some evidence from Hungary and Romania

ABSTRACT Framed in the growing body of research on informality, this article attempts to define a distinction between informality performed ‘in spite of’ and ‘beyond’ the state. ‘In spite of’ the state refers to the case where state institutions already regulate a given situation, but citizens decide that state governance is not enough (or not appropriate, effective). ‘Beyond’ the state refers to the case where state institutions do not regulate a particular exchange and interaction so that citizens organize in response to make up for this deficiency. We support our claims through the use of two case studies built on in-depth interview material with Romanian parents and Hungarian private citizens from diverse walks of life to bring to light how individuals may understand and narrate the informal practices they engage in a positive light. By doing this, we investigate the possible conflict between individual and state morality, documenting and conceptually refining how they do not necessarily overlap, informal activities being a locus through which mismatch between them can best be explored.

Socio-economic deficits and informal domestic childcare services in Romania: the policy drivers of the commodification of care from a micro-level perspective

Abstract This article makes the argument that while the commodification of early years childcare services in the Romanian context is shaped by similar drivers as elsewhere in Europe, the overwhelmingly informal character of this commodification is first and foremost policy-induced. In particular, the configuration of family policy provisions and the care gaps created by the absence of quality childcare alternatives especially during the first three years are mainly responsible for the expansion of undeclared home-based early years childcare services. By reflecting on the particular configuration of macro-level social and economic deficits that have shaped demand for and supply of early years childcare over the last ten years in conjunction with family policy provisions, the paper empirically engages with the ways in which these deficits play out at the household level, generating a need for informally provided bespoke early years childcare. Relying on in-depth interview material with urban and rural dual-income couples, collected in 2010 and 2015, the article captures the crucial importance of family policy instruments in shaping the nature of specific configurations of need for care services, to be provided first and foremost informally.