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This paper is designed to shed some light on possible impacts of globalization and Europeanization on social security reforms in one of the new EU member state - Lithuania. The paper is based on 67 expert interviews conducted with the political elite, academics, journalists, senior civil servants, interest group representatives and the economic elite. The paper highlights the higher influence of globalization through the activities of such supranational agencies as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund compared to the impact of cognitive Europeanization on social security reforms.

The paper reviews recent socio-economic changes in the 10 new EU member states of Central and Eastern Europe and the earlier and latest debates on the emergence of the post-communist welfare state regime. It asks two questions: are the new EU member states more similar to each other in their social problems encountered than to the rest of the EU world? Do they exhibit enough common socio-economic and institutional features to group them into the distinct/unified post-communist welfare regime that deviates from any well-known welfare state typology?
The findings of this paper indicate that despite some slight variation within, the new EU countries exhibit lower indicators compared to the EU-15 as it comes to the minimum wage and social protection expenditure. The degree of material deprivation and the shadow economy is on average also higher if compared to the EU-15 or the EU-27. However, then it comes to at-risk-of-poverty rate after social transfers or Gini index, some Eastern European outliers especially the Check Republic, but also Slovenia, Slovakia and Hungary perform the same or even better than the old capitalist democracies. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, however, show many similarities in their social indicators and performances and this group of countries never perform better than the EU-15 or the EU-27 averages. Nevertheless, the literature reviews on welfare state development in the CEE region reveal a number of important institutional features in support of identifying the distinct/unified post-communist welfare regime. Most resilient of it are: an insurance-based programs that played a major part in the social protection system; high take-up of social security; relatively low social security benefits; increasing signs of liberalization of social policy; and the experience of the Soviet/Communist type of welfare state, which implies still deeply embedded signs of solidarity and universalism.

This paper reviews some theoretical and empirical literature written on welfare state development in post-communist Eastern Europe in the light of the theories and approaches that have been developed to study affluent capitalist democracies. The aim of this discussion is to critically reassess the old welfare state theories, definitions and approaches and their implications regarding the study of post-communist Eastern Europe.
The paper ends with the conclusion that the exclusion of 'communist' countries for more than twenty years from welfare state theorising has created an empirical and theoretical gap. This creates fresh challenges for welfare state research and calls for a new paradigm. It is evident that the not so well explored Eastern European region with regards to social policy research suggests that it is necessary not only to test already existing welfare state theories, definitions, typologies and approaches on these countries, but also to advance them.

This paper provides an overview of the differences that have emerged in the social insurance systems of the three Baltic countries since they regained their independence. It assesses how closely the institutional structures of social insurance in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania approximate to various ideal types of social security institutions to be found in the research literature. The findings indicate that, in general terms, the social security system of Estonia and Latvia can be labelled as a mix of the basic security and corporatist model, even if there are also some weak elements of the targeted model. In contrast, it appears that the institutional changes developing in the social security system of Lithuania have led to a combination of the basic security and targeted models of welfare. Even if they started with identical social security institutions inherited from the Soviet period, there is not only similarity, but also diversity in how these countries are now addressing problems in the social policy field.

The aim of this paper is to explore the various views of the social policy elites in the Baltic States concerning family policy &, in particular, family benefits as one of the possible explanations for the observed policy differences. This study is based on semi-structured expert interviews from the three Baltic countries conducted in 2002. The qualitative analyses indicate that the Baltic States differ significantly with regard to the reasons behind their family policies. Lithuanian decision-makers seek to reduce poverty among families with children & enhance parents' responsibility for bringing up their children. Latvian policy-makers act so as to increase the birth rate & create equal opportunities for children from all families. Policies that seek to create equal opportunities for all children & the desire to enhance gender equality was more visible in the case of Estonia in comparison with the other two countries. This study thus indicate how intimately the attitudes of top-level bureaucrats, policy-makers & researchers shape social policy. Tables, Figures, References. [Copyright 2005 The Regents of the University of California; published by Elsevier Ltd.]