Introduction

In 1989 Central and Eastern European policy-makers were suddenly confronted with the difficult task of restructuring a welfare system under a completely different economic and political system. The restructuring of welfare institutions accompanied the emergence of new and serious societal problems. More and more people were hit by unemployment and poverty , the family pattern in force during communism had to be re-discussed, and also protection during old age and sickness had to be renegotiated. Reforms started immediately and involved important structural changes . The four Visegrad countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) raised retirement age and pension insurance contributions while reducing the pay-as-you-go principle, introduced health insurance while guaranteeing the access to health care through the obligation of the state to ensure unprotected citizens, implemented a German-like unemployment insurance consisting usually of three pillars (unemployment benefits, unemployment assistance and social assistance ), reduced the family benefits heritage of the communist system while continuing to pursue pro-natalist policy and extensive childcare provisions (very often until the child is enrolled in university education), as well as establishing a basic safety net for those citizens at persistent risk of poverty (Cerami 2006).

Despite the fact that great attention has recently been given to the role played by institutions and path-dependent mechanisms in the development of European welfare systems (see, for instance, Bonoli and Palier 2000; Pierson 2004; Ebbinghaus 2005; Streeck and Thelen 2005b), the possible outcome of such institutional transformations is still the object of a controversial debate. Here, the main problem is to characterize the new internal configuration, which results from a continuous process of structuring, destructuring and restructuring of existent welfare institutions . The literature usually addresses Central and Eastern European welfare systems as extremely diverse and doomed to follow, on a country basis, one of the Esping-Andersen's (1990) three-fold typology. For Bob Deacon (1992), Poland should have become a good example of a ‘postcommunist Conservative corporatist ‘ welfare state, Czechoslovakia of a Social Democratic model, while Hungary of a Liberal welfare regime .