Departing from a Common Point: Explaining the Divergent Transformations of Post-Yugoslav Welfare States
Abstract
The countries of former Yugoslavia have experienced tremendous change in the past twenty years. Some of them plagued by devastating effects of war and others by the legacy of authoritarian regimes, they are undergoing incremental democratization and market liberalization.
Their welfare systems have also undergone significant transitions, departing from a common legacy of a "hybrid" welfare state regime, which combined a conservative welfare state core with universalistic elements (Stambolieva, 2014). Scholars of welfare states have long been occupied with understanding the nature and scope of welfare state changes and why they come about.
To explain transformation, studies in the Western Balkans highlight meta-level variables, such as the role of favorable initial conditions, the level of democratic consolidation or the level of external influence and relate them to varying outcomes in terms of welfare policy and provision (Deacon and Stubbs, 2007; Stambolieva, 2014). Drawing on the author's PhD research, this paper seeks to build upon previous explorations by looking at institutional welfare transformations in four post- Yugoslav countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia.
It aims to understand the nature of institutional transformation in the sectors of family policy, employment policy and old-age pension systems, as well as to explain why such transformations have occurred. The nature of institutional transformation is considered through dimensions of conditionality or generosity of programs (Clasen and Clegg, 2007) and the principles of equity, equality and need (van Oorschot and Clasen, 2002).
Institutional transformation is understood to be shaped by configurations of conditions relating to actors' interests and preferences; reform ideas; institutions as opportunity structures for change; and socioeconomic conditions (e.g. Schmidt, 2010, Cerami, 2009, Streeck and Thelen, 2005).
Key conditions hypothesized to influence institutional transformation include the strength of political parties and clientelist networks (Esping-Andersen, 1990; Cerami and Stubbs, 2011); the type of pluralism (e.g. Kitschelt, 1995; Hallin and Mancini, 2004); the nature of external influence; the strength of rational legal authority (Weber, 1946); institutional path-dependence (Pierson, 2000); the prevalence of specific ideas (Cerami and Vanhuysse 2009, Schmidt, 2010); and structural socioeconomic conditions.
The paper adopts a comparative case study method and a most similar case design. Configurational comparative analysis is applied to identify configurations of hypothesized sets of conditions that have worked together to produce specific outcomes.
The paper relies on empirical research, including interviews with officials and experts, analysis of institutional and legal frameworks, welfare indicators and socioeconomic data from a twenty-year period.