EU integration and the transformation of post-communist welfare : traversing a 'quantum leap'?
By: LENDVAI, Noemi
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ArticlePublisher: Malden, MA : Wiley-Blackwell, October 2008Social policy administration 42, 5, p. 504-523Abstract: While many academic accounts treat post-communist Europe as just another site of Europeanization with an emphasis on 'adaptation' and 'learning', this article argues that EU integration and the transformation of post-communist Europe is a much more complex, volatile and uncertain process; not so much one of adaptation but more a 'quantum leap', apparently bypassing the stage of a Keynesian regime. Post-communist Europe is asked to join an EU agenda that has many features of what Jessop calls the 'Schumpeterian Workfare Postnational Regime' (SWPR). In that sense, EU integration of post-communist welfare is not simply a 'catch-up', it is a complex transformation process whereby, rather than EU Enlargement and Eastern Europe being seen as a threat to 'Social Europe', the EU imposes its own 'social deficit' and economic hegemony onto Eastern Europe
While many academic accounts treat post-communist Europe as just another site of Europeanization with an emphasis on 'adaptation' and 'learning', this article argues that EU integration and the transformation of post-communist Europe is a much more complex, volatile and uncertain process; not so much one of adaptation but more a 'quantum leap', apparently bypassing the stage of a Keynesian regime. Post-communist Europe is asked to join an EU agenda that has many features of what Jessop calls the 'Schumpeterian Workfare Postnational Regime' (SWPR). In that sense, EU integration of post-communist welfare is not simply a 'catch-up', it is a complex transformation process whereby, rather than EU Enlargement and Eastern Europe being seen as a threat to 'Social Europe', the EU imposes its own 'social deficit' and economic hegemony onto Eastern Europe
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