Welfare State Classification: The Development of Central Eastern European Welfare
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| 6. Slovakia 6.1 Introduction The Slovak Republic was created in 1993, after it became independent from the Czech Republic. Hence, concerning social security and the organization of its welfare state it shares the same history as the Czech Republic. The welfare state of Czechoslovakia was well developed; it had already been decentralized in 1968, this was an advantage for the Slovak Republic. However, when transforming from a communist state towards a market-oriented state, Slovakia faced some challenges. This mainly has to do with the fact that the Czechs shaped the country’s social policy from within the central ministry in Prague, which made them the successors of the dissolved federation. This meant that the Slovaks needed to find both a new direction and a new identity for their own welfare state (Inglot 2009: 88). In other words, Slovakia needed to both rebuild a welfare state which would fit into the new market-oriented circumstances and also it needed to develop aims and norms and values of the new welfare state which would fit into the culture and thoughts of the new Republic. Again, they suffered greater pain from the transition from a communist towards a market-oriented welfare state than the Czechs (Inglot 2009). Inglot (2009) distinguishes two phases in which Slovakia searched for a welfare doctrine. The first phase lasted from 1993 to 2000, while the second phase started in 2000. The first phase can be characterized by the disappointment of the results of the mixture of liberal and social democratic market policies which were present in the early years of Czechoslovakia. This disappointment led to the adoption of the so called third way, which had a strong preference for corporatist governance (Inglot 2009: 88-89). The trade unions played an important role, this was caused by the fact that employees of the large industrial sectors were the core of the government’s constituency. Within this period, the government attempted to include the egalitarian, social democratic welfare component into a new Slovak welfare ideology (Inglot 2009: 89). Hence, in first phase of welfare reforms the government tried develop a new welfare ideology, which was based on egalitarian and universal components of the welfare state. The second phase of welfare reforms, which started in 2000, was characterized by a radical redefinition of the national welfare ideology by the more pro-Western and pro-European government. Inglot (2009) states that, in line with Poland and Hungary, the government proposed a pro-market vision which included privatization and retrenchment of the social safety net. The new welfare state, which included multi-pillar pension schemes and means-tested benefits had many similarities with the Hungarian model of the mid-1990s (Inglot 2009: 89). In other words, the Slovakian welfare state at the beginning of the new millennium could be considered to at the same level as the Hungarian welfare state in the 1990s. This was the result of the mistakes of the anti- democratic and anti-Western government which ruled the first decade of independence. Inglot argues that the fact that throughout the 1990s Slovakia has remained disadvantaged in terms of policy leadership and that a lack of necessary policy expertise also contributes to the arrears of the Slovak welfare state (Inglot 2009: 89). All in all, the development of the Slovak welfare state can be described as a search for a new welfare ideology. One can observe two phases, which can be characterized by two different ideas about how the welfare state should be organized. Of course, as occurred in Poland, the ideologies of the governments which are in power are highly influential. In Slovakia one can see a shift from a egalitarian, social democratic approach towards a pro-market, privatized and means-tested approach. 35 |