Welfare State Formation in the Enlarged European Union: Patterns of Reform in Postcommunist States

Eastern Enlargement of the European Union challenged the design of European Welfare states. Many authors discuss the impact of East European social security systems on their West European counterparts and fear a “race to the bottom”. This paper addresses welfare state developments in the eight post-socialist new member states which completed the accession process in 2004, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Slovenia (EU-8). We focus on institutional patterns and performance as well as on the impact of internal and external actors of welfare state formation. How do the EU-8 diverge from West European welfare states and how do they fit into the typology of welfare state regimes