ABSTRACT
This chapter is divided into four parts. First, I shall summarise the main characteristics of the system of social welfare that existed across Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union before the reforms and revolutions of 1989 and indicate the social policy problems bequeathed by ‘communism’ to the successor regimes. Then, I shall summarise the main trends in social policy that have emerged since the collapse of the old regimes in 1989. Here we will notice the extent of commonality across the several countries of Eastern Europe and focus on the common issues for social policy in this period of transition and also notice beginnings of the diversification of development. Lastly, I shall locate the emergent diversification of social policy regime types within the comparative social policy literature that offers typologies of Western welfare states. I shall ask whether the East is merely copying the West or whether new types of postcommunist welfare regimes are emerging.
