The development of employment policy in post-communist Eastern Europe

The dissertation explores the different approaches to dealing with unemployment during the transition to a market economy in Eastern Europe by focusing on a paired comparison of employment policy development in the Czech Republic and Poland, tested further by a "plausibility probe" of employment policy evolution in Russia and Bulgaria. It starts with the observation that despite shared similarities in terms of historical backgrounds, communist era legacies and challenges presented by the complex political and socio-economic transformations following regime change, the four cases demonstrate significant divergence in their employment policy frameworks, and form counter-intuitive clusters. It asks why the Czech Republic and Russia combine restrictive unemployment compensation with an emphasis on active employment programs in their policy repertoires, while Poland and Bulgaria rely on non-restrictive unemployment compensation and neglect active programs. Following a "most similar systems" research methodology, the study traces the process of employment policy development in the four countries by combining secondary source analysis with primary research. The characteristics of labor union movements form the main factors that influence the variation in employment policy frameworks, and are in turn affected by the degree of competition in a political system, and economic legacies of the period preceding regime change, as background conditions. The argument highlights the role of labor movement structure in the development of union preferences for either passive or active employment policy. In particular, it demonstrates that labor movements dominated by a single large organization tend to develop preferences for active labor market programs and employment protection, at the expense of passive programs and wage growth, while labor movements split between two main organizations develop preferences for passive labor market programs and wage growth, at the expense of active programs and employment protection. Contrary to many studies that point to trade union weakness as a defining characteristic of post-communist transition, this dissertation presents evidence of trade union influence and successful defense of outlined priorities in the process of employment policy development. The conclusions emphasize the need to reevaluate the role of labor in studying the political economy of Eastern Europe.