Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

THE POLITICS OF LABOUR MARKET ADJUST-
MENT IN POST-1989 POLAND
because they facilitate the identification of a
shift of welfare regime. The idea of ‘welfare
regime’ entails a societal and socio-political
embeddedness resulting from the politics of
social policy in modern democratic welfare
states. The concept is heavily contextualised,
however. The development of the welfare state
is closely linked to the rise of the industrial
society in Western Europe when ‘its promise
was not merely social policy to alleviate social
ills and redistribute basic risks, but an effort to
rewrite the social contract between government
and the citizenry’ (Esping-Andersen 1999: 33).
With a view to represent the limited crosscountry
diversity of welfare capitalism, and
building on an earlier distinction between the
residual and the institutional welfare state by
Titmuss (1958), Esping-Andersen (1990)
identified ‘three worlds of welfare capitalism’.
In a residual welfare state, the state assumes
responsibility only when the family or the
market fails; it seeks to limit commitments
to marginal and deserving social groups.
On the contrary, the institutional welfare
state addresses the entire population, is
universalistic and embodies an institutionalised
commitment to welfare; therefore, in principle,
it extends welfare commitments to all
areas of distribution necessary for societal
welfare. The divide between Bismarckian and
Beveridgean systems is often used to contrast
two fundamentally opposed ways of
organising social protection: work-
page 124 related entitlements based on statute
that reproduce income differentials
in the former, and universal flat-rate
benefits that equalise income, especially upon
retirement, in the latter (Arza 2006: 2). While
several waves of reforms in many European
countries from the 1990s onward have blurred
these institutional differences, the two types of
welfare systems remain useful as a cognitive
and historical reference, including in the minds
of contemporary actors. Besides, these regimes
provide a conceptual framework for the analysis
of other empirical cases.
Situating Central and Eastern European
welfare regimes with respect to these seminal
categories is often problematic. On the one
hand, some historical features of their welfare
arrangements dating back to the interwar
period were inspired by Bismarckian welfare
states: Polish territories belonging to the
German Empire inherited Bismarckian-type
social insurance. On the other hand, eligibility
and benefits became universal with socialistera
full employment after 1945. Nevertheless,
in the 1990s, the dependence of welfare rights
upon employment or occupation was still
reflected in the relatively high share of social
expenditure financed through contributions.
The most recent reforms, however, tended
to mirror post-industrial welfare reforms
in Western Europe and a liberal-oriented
perspective emphasizing benefits targeting and
social safety nets (Barr 1994 & 2005). Given
generally poor achievements of the welfare
state in the CEECs, social outcomes may
instead resemble some observations made on
Southern Europe (Ferrera 1996).
The macro-typology is most useful when
understood as a frame of reference of idealtypical
configurations or a repertory of
possible ways in which social protection
may be organized (Palier 2005a), rather
than a classification in which all empirical
cases should fit. 3 One key assumption in the