This article compares the socio-economic determinants of welfare attitudes in the Czech Republic to those in Sweden, using survey data from the 1996 ISSP survey 'The Role of Governments'. Many theorists of the transition have claimed that the post-communist countries have a different political dynamic that their west European neighbors. For example, David Ost claims that that citizens of post-communist countries during the 1990s were not sure of which class they would belong to and therefore, were not sure of their class interests. Similarly, Zagorski claims that in post-communist countries educational level becomes one of the most important determinants of welfare and socioeconomic attitudes, because the reform process is very complicated. Those with higher levels of education can better understand the complexities of the reforms and are more willing to accept short-term disadvantages for long-term gains. However, many experts have also claimed that the Czech Republic presents an exception to these trends. It is the one country in which party-competition is based on socioeconomic issues and voting is class-based. This study tests these three hypotheses, to determine whether the Czech Republic really does provide an exception to the general post-communist development.

This article argues that policies that promote gender equality actually also increase freedom of choice. Thus, despite the neo-liberal criticism that welfare policies limit choices and privatization and market solutions increase freedom of choice, this article concludes that market-liberal welfare regimes offer less choice than the Nordic type of social-democratic welfare regimes, which have openly striven to promote gender equality. They do so by making it easier for mothers to choose to work (by making day care available and making it easier for fathers to stay at home with children) and by giving fathers the ability to choose to spend more time with children. However, within the realm of such policies, it is still possible to offer more or less freedom of choice, for example, by making parental leaves either extremely flexible or rigid in how they are utilized. Interestingly, it turns out that, in the real world, policies that promote gender equality even offer greater freedom of choice for the group of women considered to be 'family oriented' as well as for lesbian and homosexual couples.

The events of 1989 did not unfold exactly as democratization theory predicts. A nuanced consideration of conditions in specific countries and the proclivities of their leaders helps fine-tune the script for democratic transition.

Institutions, not individuals, explain the diverging paths of political leadership in Poland and the Czech Republic.

A combination of area studies and comparative social science approaches leads to rich studies of the transition to democracy.

In this article we analyse the evolution of the Czech welfare state and we examine the factors explaining its path. We show that although the Czech welfare regime exhibits a 'mixed profile' that includes conservative and universalist elements, it is increasingly moving in a more liberal, residualist direction - not because of conscious steps but rather through decay. Governments have often zig-zagged in their policies and resorted to symbolic reforms at times rather than implementing ideologically based, consistent policies. We argue that historical and sociological institutionalism combined with a social-capital approach can explain this decay better than the more common arguments about economic pressures combined with ideological hegemony or the protest-avoidance strategy. In particular, the social capital approach adds to our institutional framework by explaining why cutbacks in welfare programmes have not met much opposition, even though public opinion surveys consistently show support for more generous welfare policies, and why policies have deviated so much from political rhetoric.

This article compares family policies in Poland and the Czech Republic in order to explain why the two countries have different policies. Previous studies are right to claim that post-communist family policies are basically going in a refamilialist direction that gives mothers a greater incentive to return to the home, but they tend to neglect the important differences that exist between countries. Although previous studies were correct to emphasize the role of the anti-feminist communist legacy in explaining this trend toward re-famialilization, it is a country's economic-institutional legacy that goes the farthest in explaining the differences in policies.