ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the characterising social assistance provision in a regime perspective. It analyses the scale and governance processes with outcome indicators of welfare, in order to investigate if these processes can intertwine with those usually taken into account in welfare and social assistance regimes. The features of social assistance and poverty relief represent an important dimension to render Esping-Andersen's three worlds of welfare capitalism typology more complex and adequate to grasp existing differences among countries. Poland shares different characteristics of the conservative-continental welfare regime, coupled with liberal market-driven lines of reform followed since the 1990s. The role of private actors is minor and confined to the provision of individualised activation measures, linked to the labour market. Private actors, not-for-profit charitable organisations and trade unions can express their opinions, for example, on eligibility criteria and on the design of measures, since they possess rich know-how and are not strictly bounded by public resources and specific definitions of delivery roles.
