The modern history of Hungary and Poland, both belonging to Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), is characterised by turbulent political and economic changes and ‘emergency’ decisions in the field of social policy (Inglot, 2008). Forty years of an autocratic communist regime provides the strongest common legacy of social policy in the two countries. The subsequent liberal democracies, built up since 1990, have, however, brought to the surface long-forgotten patterns of midwar social policy in both countries which now shape the language of social policy, together with that from their communist legacies. The neoliberal agenda of ‘retrenchment’ has penetrated Eastern European countries just when they were about to adjust their welfare institutions to capitalist democracy, making a strong impression on their social policy agendas and languages. During the process of accession to the European Union (EU), Poland and Hungary also adopted some of the social policy discourse of the EU, though not without controversies. The historical volatility of social policy programming in this region (Szikra and Tomka, 2009) is partly due to the sharp ideological division on this matter between Conservative and Socialist elites. This is why the issue of social policy, as we argue in this chapter, has been politicised ever since the introduction of the first state-run programmes. This is reflected in the translation of ‘social policy’ into both Polish and Hungarian, in relation to which we need to make a key remark right at beginning of our chapter: there is only one word for ‘policy’ and ‘politics’ in Hungarian and Polish, as both are called ‘politika’ (in Hungarian) or ‘polityka’ (in Polish). Thus the term ‘social policy’ has most often been translated as ‘szociálpolitika’ in Hungarian and ‘polityka społeczna’ in Polish.

In this chapter we demonstrate how historical legacies since the late 19th century – together with current internal, external and supranational influences – have formed the distinct social policy languages in these post-communist countries. Key terms and definitions used to describe the field and aims of social policy are investigated in the most important periods during which distinct developments in social policy language have been witnessed: first, from the late 19th century to the Second World War; second, from the state socialist period (late 1940s) to 1989; and third, from the eve of the political and economic transformation in 1989/1990 up until today.