Social Justice and the Welfare State in Central and Eastern Europe: The Impact of Privatization. Ed. Demetrius S. Iatridis Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2000. xiv, 254 pp. Notes. Index. Figures. Tables. $65.00, hard bound.

Slavic Review ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 830-831
Author(s):  
Nick Manning
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valeriy Heyets

Nearly 30 years of transformation of the sociopolitical and legal, socioeconomical and financial, sociocultural and welfare, and socioenvironmental dimensions in both Central and Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, has led to a change of the social quality of daily circumstances. On the one hand, the interconnection and reciprocity of these four relevant dimensions of societal life is the underlying cause of such changes, and on the other, the state as main actor of the sociopolitical and legal dimension is the initiator of those changes. Applying the social quality approach, I will reflect in this article on the consequences of these changes, especially in Ukraine. In comparison, the dominant Western interpretation of the “welfare state” will also be discussed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 149-155
Author(s):  
Alla Silenko ◽  
Vira Bezrodna ◽  
Lyudmyla Lyasota

The subject of the research is the economic and political factors of the welfare state in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and in Ukraine. Methodology. The work used a comparative approach, which made it possible to study the development of social states in Central and Eastern Europe, in Ukraine, to identify their similarities and differences. The institutional approach made it possible to consider the problem as a multidimensional socio-political phenomenon, to highlight functionally and systemically important elements and to study their mutual influence. Results. The purpose of the article is to analyze the prospects of the welfare state in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Ukraine, the influence of political and economic factors on its development. To achieve this goal, the following research tasks were set: to consider the issue of the influence of democracy on economic and social development; analyze the role of the state in socio-economic processes; to study the experience of socio-economic reforms in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which began their reforms almost simultaneously with Ukraine, and to find out why the success of their reforms is much higher than those achieved in Ukraine; clarify the reasons for the failure of reforms in Ukraine. It is shown that democracy does not affect economic growth; at the same time, democracy is the guardian of economic and social stability. It is substantiated that the welfare state provides citizens with protection that they will never receive from the state: the “night watchman”. As world experience has shown, the market does not guarantee the protection of the economy from crises and is not a panacea for eliminating the consequences. Sometimes, the market can even pose a threat to society, for example in the field of ecology. Thus, the actions of market forces and the interests of society do not always coincide. It is argued that the idea of a stable causal relationship between the reduction in the state’s participation in the redistribution of national income and an increase in economic growth is erroneous. Failures of economic and social reforms in Ukraine are explained by the fact that their liberal version was chosen, the consequences of which can be characterized as catastrophic. The low level of professionalism of reformers and corruption also played a negative role.


2021 ◽  
pp. 152-172
Author(s):  
Willem Adema ◽  
Peter Whiteford

This chapter contributes to the discussion of public and private social welfare by drawing together recent information on these different ways of providing social benefits. It presents data on public social expenditure for 2015–17 and accounts for the impact of the tax system and private social expenditure to develop indicators on net social expenditure for 2015. The chapter shows that conventional estimates of gross public spending differ significantly from estimates of net public spending and net total social expenditure, leading to an incorrect measurement and ranking of total social welfare effort across countries.Just as importantly, the fact that total social welfare support is incorrectly measured implies that the outcomes of welfare state support may also be incorrectly measured. Thus, the main objectives of the chapter include considering the implications of this more comprehensive definition of welfare state effort for analysis of the distributional impact of the welfare state and for an assessment of the efficiency and incentive effects of different welfare state arrangements.


Author(s):  
Daniel Fernando Carolo ◽  
José António Pereirinha

AbstractThis paper presents a data series on social expenditure in Portugal for the period 1938-2003. The series was built with the aim of identifying and characterizing the most significant phases in the process leading up to the current welfare state system in this country. The establishment of a social insurance (Previdência) in 1935 was one of the founding pillars of the Estado Novo (New State). Reforms to Social Welfare (Previdência Social) in 1962, while in the full throes of the New State, policy measures taken after the revolution of 1974 and a new orientation for social policy following the accession of Portugal to the European Economic Community (EEC) in the mid-1980s brought about significant transformations in the institutional organizational structure that provided welfare and conferred social rights in Portugal. To understand this process, knowledge is needed of the transformations to the institutional structures governing the organizations that provided welfare, welfare coverage in terms of the type of benefit and the population entitled to social risk protection, the magnitude of spending on benefits associated with these risks, as well as how benefits were allocated between the institutions. We built a data series for the period 1938-1980, which can then be matched to data already published in the OECD Social Expenditure Database from 1980 onwards. As a result, a consistent series for social expenditure from 1938 to 2003 was obtained. The methodology used to create the series enabled us to measure the impact of the variation in population coverage for social risks and the average generosity of benefits on the relative share of social expenditure in GDP. We present an interpretive reading for the full period, covering the New State and the Democracy from 1974, of the process of building the welfare state in Portugal.


e-Finanse ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 20-32
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Golebiowski ◽  
Piotr Szczepankowski ◽  
Dorota Wisniewska

Abstract The article examines the impact of financialization on income inequality between 2004 and 2013, through a panel analysis of seven European countries. Moreover, it attempts to examine differences in the perception of the phenomenon between the selected European countries belonging to the G-7 and countries from Central and Eastern Europe. The results demonstrate the existence of individual effects, which means that the level of inequality under examination is influenced predominantly by country-specific factors. The most significant correlation is noticeable between the level of unemployment and the degree of income inequality. An increase in unemployment is accompanied by a rise in the disproportions in the level of income that individual citizens have at their disposal whereas a decrease in the unemployment level contributes to an improvement of the GINI coefficient. Simultaneously, the results confirm the existence of significant correlations between the level of the GINI coefficient and such financialization indicators as the share of employment in finance in total employment and the contribution of the financial sector to total value added creation. The most prominent dependency was discovered when a constructed synthetic indicator was adopted as an indicator of financialization. At the same time, analysis of the synthetic country financialization indicator points to a conclusion that the level of financialization is higher in European countries belonging to the G-7 (especially Great Britain) than in countries from Central and Eastern Europe.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Srećko Jelinić ◽  

In this paper the author is searching for the connection between the concepts of the rule of law, so called social justice and the concept of the welfare state. The notion of the rule of law needs to be interpretated and defined precisely. The arguments in the paper are supported with selected court findings and decisions. The special emphasis is given to the issue of social justice which is, as it seems, particularly questionable in the field of consumer contracts where the issue of inequality of the parties to the contract comes to existence. Different types of contracts such as the contracts for telecommunication services together with some other issues such as the later change in contractual conditions and difficulties in obtaining payment for provided goods and services are being discussed and discoursed


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