Välfärdsbyggande i Östeuropa : En komparativ studie av västeuropeiska och postsocialistiska välfärdssystem

Sammanfattning: Welfare, meaning the well-being of the citizenry, and the supply of it has been one of the central concerns of all leaders throughout history. The expansion of the welfare programs in the western hemisphere during the Cold war is by some regarded as one of the reasons why the “west” emerged victorious from the war in the late 20th century. Following the fall of the Berlin wall democratically elected governments in the newly formed states in Eastern Europe transitioned to market economies and thus formed their own versions of capitalist welfare states. In the 90s it was projected that these states would create welfare states approximate to those that existed in the west, predominantly to the (neo-)liberal model. In the 2000s this assumption changed and disregarded the assumptions about the dominance of the liberal model. Today, some argue that the welfare programs of these post-socialist countries resemble each other more than their western counterparts. The aim of this study is to find out whether this is the case in more recent years focusing on social security payments. To do this data is used from three post-socialist European countries; Estonia, Bulgaria, and Poland, and four western European countries; the UK, Germany, Sweden and Spain comparatively to determine the possible similarities between them. The result of this study shows that there are similarities between post-socialist countries’ welfare systems but also highlights the difficulties of categorizing them as belonging to the same ideal type of welfare system.