Measuring Welfare State Generosity in Transitional Welfare States: The Case of Post-Communist Countries in Central and Eastern Europe

Assessing the emerging welfare systems of the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) within the framework of established theories of welfare state has long been hindered by the lack of comparative quantitative empirical indicators. With the new time series data provided by the CWED2 dataset, comparative approaches including the CEE countries have become feasible. This paper first discusses the potential and the pitfalls of quantitative measures of welfare entitlements in the tradition of the social rights of citizenship-approach when applied outside the mature Western welfare states. To what extent do indicators of social security scheme generosity measure the same in established and emerging welfare states, which functional equivalents may be relevant in the context of emerging welfare states and how far can we stretch our theoretical concepts? The second part of the paper demonstrates empirically how the emerging CEE welfare states fit established categories of welfare regimes when applying the well-known indicators of welfare state generosity in a macro-comparison.