ABSTRACT
The period since 1989 has been marked by intensive reforms. Each public policy – on poverty and exclusion, unemployment, old age, family and children, health care – has its priorities, difficulties, achievements and dynamics. The common direction of the reforms was the transition from universal access and equality towards liberalization and targeting of public policy. The whole society has been transformed from homogenization and atomization towards fragmentation and individualization. Solidarity in the new conditions is a value, which has to be redefined in order to be recognized in contrast to the principle of collectivism, which prevailed over the individual will and needs in the previous period. Giddens (1996) suggests the term ‘active trust’, which refers to the solidarity between individuals, indicating that no collective entity dominates the individual. Solidarity is understood as a consciously made individual choice in favour of others. This term contributes to a concept which corresponds to more dynamic social structures. Achieving both economic growth and social stability, balancing between individualization and solidarity are aims towards which the success of the welfare state reforms during the post-totalitarian transition will be measured in this chapter.
