Despite dramatic increases in poverty, unemployment, and social inequalitites, the Central and Eastern European transitions from communism to market democracy in the 1990s have been remarkably peaceful. This book proposes a new explanation for this unexpected political quiescence. It shows how reforming governments in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have been able to prevent massive waves of strikes and protests by the strategic use of welfare state programs such as pensions and unemployment benefits. From a narrow economic viewpoint, these policies often appeared to be immensely...

This book adopts novel theoretical approaches to study the diverse welfare pathways that have evolved across Central and Eastern Europe since the end of communism. It highlights the role of explanatory factors such as micro-causal mechanisms, power politics, path departure, and elite strategies.

This volume brings together an expert set of scholars from Europe and North America to investigate generational politics and public policies within an approach explicitly focusing on comparative political science.