Despite dramatic increases in poverty, unemployment, and social inequalities, the Central and Eastern European transitions from communism to market democracy in the 1990s have been remarkably peaceful. This book proposes a new explanation for this unexpected political quiescence. It shows how reforming governments in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have been able to prevent massive waves of strikes and protests by the strategic use of welfare state programs such as pensions and unemployment benefits.

Divide and Pacify explains how social policies were used to prevent massive job losses with softening labor market policies, or to split up highly aggrieved groups of workers in precarious jobs by sending some of them onto unemployment benefits and many others onto early retirement and disability pensions. From a narrow economic viewpoint, these policies often appeared to be immensely costly or irresponsibly populist. Yet a more inclusive social-scientific perspective can shed new light on these seemingly irrational policies by pointing to deeper political motives and wider sociological consequences.

Pieter Vanhuysse obtained his PhD at the London School of Economics. A former fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study at Collegium Budapest and the Higher Education Committee of the State of Israel, he currently holds a joint appointment as Lecturer in Political Economy at the School of Political Sciences and the Faculty of Education of the University of Haifa. His work centers on the politics of social policy, education, human capital, and democratic transitions.

János Kornai is Professor Emeritus of Harvard University, Permanent Fellow Emeritus of Collegium Budapest, Institute for Advanced Study and Distinguished Research Professor of Central European University, Budapest. He is member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and of several foreign academies. 

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 The unexpected peacefulness of transitions
2.1. Social costs and early breakdown prophesies
2.3. Muted protests: Post-communist Europe in comparative perspective
2.4. Conclusions

Chapter 3 Political quiescence despite conditions for conflict
3.1. Disruptive protests: The case of threatened workers
3.2. Rival explanations of post-communist protest levels
3.3. Conclusions

Chapter 4 Preventing protests: Divide and pacify as political strategy
4.1. Divide and pacify in theory: Splitting up the threatened workers
4.2. Higher hurdles: The protest capacity of the unemployed and abnormal pensioners
4.3. Informal exit and small-scale work before and after 1989
4.4. Sentenced to silence: Protest opportunity costs of the unemployed and abnormal pensioners
4.5. Conclusions
 
Chapter 5 The Great Abnormal Pensioner Booms: Strategic social policies in practice
5.1. The unemployed: Divided first, squeezed later
5.2. Pensioner policies: The wheel of fortune reversed
5.3. Divide and pacify in action: The post-communist pensioner booms
5.4. Conclusions

Chapter 6 Peaceful pathways: The political economy of post-communist welfare
6.1. Policy shift: Interpreting early pensions choices
6.2. Generational politics: The subsequent evolution of welfare pathways
6.3. Post-communist labor market strategies
6.4. Alternative explanations of post-communist welfare politics
6.5. Conclusions

Chapter 7 Conclusions

Appendices
References
Endnotes