Social Policies and Structures Under Transition: Cohesion and Tensions

Jiri Vecernik ()

Prague Economic Papers, 2004, vol. 2004, issue 4, 310-322

Abstract: The article tries to demonstrate important links between social structure and social policies. The post-communist state interferes more than other governments into social structure and supports strong actors. This hinders expansion of the main actor of a successful transition - the middle class. Its stagnation or adverse development causes that the social structure (disintegrated, polarized and unstable) implicitly becomes the main social problem itself which generates other "minor" problems. The middle-class perspective frames many tensions and there can be exhibited four of them: between pensioners and economically active; between working and non-working poor; between the middle class and other groups and between the entrepreneurial and white-collar middle class. Social cohesion cannot be reached by redistribution only. Redistribution must remain within restricted limits in order not to hinder social change by distorting individual motivation and personal effort. The delineation of such limits should also involve consideration of the social structure.

Keywords: transition; Czech Republic; social policy; social structure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H5 I3 P26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://pep.vse.cz/doi/10.18267/j.pep.244.html (text/html)
http://pep.vse.cz/doi/10.18267/j.pep.244.pdf (application/pdf)
free of charge

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:prg:jnlpep:v:2004:y:2004:i:4:id:244:p:310-322

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Editorial office Prague Economic Papers, University of Economics, nám. W. Churchilla 4, 130 67 Praha 3, Czech Republic
http://pep.vse.cz

DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.244

Access Statistics for this article

Prague Economic Papers is currently edited by Klára Pavlová

More articles in Prague Economic Papers from Prague University of Economics and Business Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Stanislav Vojir ().