Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of boxes
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 The economic factors in the collapse of state socialism and the new international environment, 1973–1989
- 2 Radical transformation and policy mistakes: dramatic economic decline in the early 1990s
- 3 Toward better times: the European Union and its policy of eastward enlargement
- 4 Recuperation and growth: the role of foreign direct investment
- 5 Economic restructuring: transforming main sectors, economic recovery, growth, and weaknesses
- 6 Transformation and social shock
- 7 Lasting changes in the structure of income, employment, welfare institutions, education, and settlement
- 8 Epilogue: the future of catching up in the European “melting pot”
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - Lasting changes in the structure of income, employment, welfare institutions, education, and settlement
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of boxes
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 The economic factors in the collapse of state socialism and the new international environment, 1973–1989
- 2 Radical transformation and policy mistakes: dramatic economic decline in the early 1990s
- 3 Toward better times: the European Union and its policy of eastward enlargement
- 4 Recuperation and growth: the role of foreign direct investment
- 5 Economic restructuring: transforming main sectors, economic recovery, growth, and weaknesses
- 6 Transformation and social shock
- 7 Lasting changes in the structure of income, employment, welfare institutions, education, and settlement
- 8 Epilogue: the future of catching up in the European “melting pot”
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Living standards, unemployment, and poverty
Social transformation opened the previously closed societies in hardline countries of the Soviet bloc and abolished state controls and regulations as well as paternalistic patronage in the entire region. The overwhelming atmosphere of freedom filled the air. No sooner was the window of opportunity opened wide to people long dissatisfied with strict limitations than they were hit by the decline of state socialism.
For the majority, however, the negative effects were felt first: erosion and collapse of the social safety net, and the rise of permanent unemployment and poverty. These new phenomena replaced security and egalitarianism and generated social polarization according to the market capitalist pattern.
There were both unavoidable and avoidable dangers on the road of social transformation. There were suggestions that it would be sensible to establish – and there were attempts to do so – an appropriate institutional framework in the form of a social safety net and a corporatist social contract system. It was hoped that these would pave the way for self-restraint and compromise. In turn, necessary reform would follow, and social pain would be mitigated in the process. As one of the experts noted:
In post-war West European history social partnership models have established a long track record that they can successfully manage [the] process of economic and social transformation. It was reasonable, therefore, to expect that especially social corporatism would be [a] popular idea among East European policy makers trying to cope with the transition process.
(Heinisch, 1999: 51–52)- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- From the Soviet Bloc to the European UnionThe Economic and Social Transformation of Central and Eastern Europe since 1973, pp. 205 - 254Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009