ForPeerReview
The Revenge of History: the Institutional Roots to PostCommunist
Family Policy in the Czech Republic, Hungary,
Poland, and Slovakia
Journal: Acta Sociologica
Manuscript ID: Draft
Manuscript Type: Article
Keywords:
Gender, Family Policy, Historical Institutionalism, post-communism,
Central Europe, path dependency
Abstract:
The authors combine historical and sociological institutional analysis
to investigate how family policies developed in four Central
European countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and
Slovakia. They argue that despite the political and socioeconomic
transformation in 1990s, the institutional development during and
before the communist era provides the best explanation for current
family policies in the region. Their article goes against the
mainstream literature on path-dependency by arguing that
decisions that send countries down important paths of policy
making do not need to be decisions that appeared to be important
at the time they were taken. They identify four critical junctures
that were decisive in setting the four countries down their current
paths of development, the relatively conservative paths in the
Czech Republic and Slovakia, the relatively liberal path in Poland,
and the most generous path in Hungary. These critical junctures
include the incorporation of the two-tier model of separate care for
younger and older pre-school children in late 1800s, the decision in
1930s/1940s to place kindergartens for children 3-5 under the
Ministry of Education, the decision in 1950s to place nurseries for
children under three under the Ministry of Health, and the decision
in 1960s to introduce extended maternity leaves.
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The Revenge of History: the Institutional Roots to Post-Communist Family
Policy in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia
In 1872 the Austro-Hungarian Empire passed a law codifying the division of
childcare facilities into nurseries for children under three and kindergartens for
children 3-5. In the early 1950s the communist regimes in Central Europe made
another decision: to move nurseries to the Ministry of Health. At the time that these
decisions were made, few would have expected them to have long-lasting influence
on family policies and gender relations in the region; yet this article shows that this
is exactly what happened. This article combines historical and sociological
institutionalism to analyze how family policies developed in four Central European
countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia). It shows that two
decades after the collapse of communism, the main differences in policies today
already existed under communist rule. Furthermore, the policy decisions made under
communist rule did not occur in a vacuum, but rather were influenced by choices
made as far back as the previous century. Moreover, this article goes against the
mainstream literature on path-dependency by arguing that decisions that send
countries down important paths of policy making do not necessarily need to be
decisions that appeared to be important at the time they were taken.
This article focuses on both, family policies and gender relations, because as
feminist scholars have pointed out, few policies influence gender relations as much
as family policies. Affordable access to childcare facilities makes it easier for
women to have careers, because they can return more quickly to the labor market
after giving birth. Paid parental leave benefits also make it easier for women to have
children, both because having a child becomes more affordable and because
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legislation on parental leaves almost always includes the right for women to return to
their previous jobs. 1
Parental leaves can also increase gender equality by
encouraging fathers to share in childcaring by offering paternity leave periods that
are only reserved for the father and by having the leaves insurance based, so that
families do not lose much money if the father stays at home (given the fact that in
most families fathers have higher salaries than mothers). Generous parental leave
policies and access to childcare facilities also make it easier for single mothers to
survive without the support of their former partners. Consequently, an analysis of
family policies goes far in examining how state policies influence gender relations
(Lewis, 1993; Lewis 1997; Sainsbury, 1994).
This article proceeds by briefly comparing family policies in the four
countries, then it gives reasons for rejecting alternative explanations of the
development of such policies in the region, before developing an institutional
analysis of the development that combines historical and sociological
institutionalism.
Comparing Central European Family Policies
The post-communist countries provide particularly interesting cases for
analyzing the development of family policies. On the one hand, the communist
countries induced mothers to work by radically increasing access to childcare
facilities (although they did less so in Poland) and introducing wages policies that
made it nearly impossible for a family to survive on one wage. On the other hand,
the communist regimes also introduced gendered leave policies that re-enforced the
role of women as the sole carers. Thus, all countries combined insurance-based
maternity leave with "extended maternity leaves." The maternity leaves usually paid
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about 90-100% of the mother's previous salary and were about 6 months long except
in more laissez-faire, liberal Poland, where they were only 4 months. The next period
entailed a flat-rate "extended maternity leave" which was at such a low level that few
fathers would agree to take it even if they were allowed to. Some important
differences arose; however, as in Poland the extended leave was means-tested and in
Hungary an extra two-year leave was introduced in the 1980s, based on the incomereplacement
principle, which gave mothers 75% of their previous income.2
Hence, under communist rule the main differences in policies had already
emerged that we can observe today among the four Central European countries.
Poland followed a relatively more liberal, laissez-faire policy of less stateinvolvement
in family policies by making maternity leaves shorter and introducing
the extended leave first without any benefit at all and then means-tested, while
gaving much less support for childcare institutions (see table 1). Czechoslovakia
followed a relatively more conservative policy that explicitly encouraged mothers to
stay at home for longer periods than in Poland by making the maternity leave longer
(6 months compared to 4) and by making the extended leave universal (paying a flatrate
rather than being means-tested as in Poland). Hungary's policies came relatively
closer to the Scandinavian model in the sense that besides building out daycare, the
regime also introduced an extended leave (GYED) based on the income replacement
principle, although similar to Czechoslovakia, it also included an optional flat-rate
leave (GYES). Mothers who did not qualify for GYED could choose GYES and
mothers who went on the two-year income-replacement GYED could choose to stay
at home for an extra year and receive the GYES for that third year. Of course, the
term "relative" is important here, as Czechoslovakia and Poland gave more support
to childcare than typical conservative and liberal countries in Western Europe at that
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time. Meanwhile Hungary still deviated from the Scandinavian countries in that its
leaves were not open to fathers.
TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE
Since the collapse of communism, these policy differences have basically
remained. However, one difference is that Hungary has been the only country to a
large extent has continued support for its nurseries, while nurseries have sharply
decreased in Poland and have nearly become extinct in both the Czech Republic and
Slovakia. Parents in the Czech Republic and Slovakia often try to get around this by
enlisting their two-years in kindergartens when spaces are free. Since the breakup of
Czechoslovakia an additional difference arose in that the Czech Republic extended
its leaves, so that mothers can stay at home for four years compared to three in
Slovakia; and later, the flat rate system in the Czech Republic became more
complicated as parents could choose three different types of leave periods, with the
shorter leaves receiving higher monthly benefits than longer leaves. Another
important change is that all four countries have opened up their extended leaves to
fathers, although with the exception of Hungary, the benefit level is too low to
encourage many fathers from actually utilizing their rights to the leaves, given the
fact that fathers usually earn more than mothers within families.
These examples show that despite the revolutionary change that took place in
post-communist societies in 1989, this radical transformation did not cause radical
changes in family policies; rather adjustments in family policies basically followed
the institutional legacies of policies made under communist rule and before. Before
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developing our argument further, we briefly consider alternative explanations of the
development of post-communist family policies.
Alternative Explanations of Post-Communist Family Policies
During the first decade of the transition to democracy and a market economy,
feminist scholars argued that the Central European governments were trying to
encourage mothers to leave the labor market by making sharp cutbacks in support for
nurseries that served children under three, while at the same time extending the
length of extended maternity leaves. These authors usually blamed the anti-feminist
ideological legacy from the communist period as the main cause for these policies
(Ferge 1997b; Funk, 1993; Heitlinger, 1996; Renne, 1997; Robinson, 1995).
Even though the anti-feminist legacy certainly influenced the attitudes of the
policy makers, this argument cannot explain why so many important differences still
remain among the post-communist countries. The most common of these
explanations has centered on the influence of international organizations (i.e. Ferge,
1997a; Deacon 2000). According to this hypothesis, countries with large foreign
debts (i.e. Hungary and Poland) open themselves to pressures from these
international credit givers, such as the IMF and World Bank to cut back on public
spending and to incorporate free-market reforms, while countries without large
foreign debts (i.e. Czech and Slovakia) do not face such pressures. It may be true
that pressures from international organizations in conjuncture with the Hungarian
debt crisis helped induce the Hungarian socialists in 1995 to remove the generous
two-year leave, while making the flat-rate leave means-tested. Yet, when a
conservative coalition government came to power in 1998, it promptly re-instated the
previous system and subsequent governments have not dared to touch the system.
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Not only has Hungary basically reverted to its communist era family policies,
today the same general rule applies for all of the Central European countries. As
already noted, the main differences among them today are precisely the main
differences that existed under communist rule. Thus, even explanations based on
differences on the mobilization of women (Glass and Fodor, 2007) cannot explain
the fact that the main differences in policies existed even before women living under
communist rule had the possibility of organizing around their interests and making
policy demands on the state.
Since the greatest differences in policies among the four countries existed
already under communist rule, to understand the development of today's policies we
must at least go back to the communist period. In this sense, this article connects to a
very recent trend that investigates the connection between communist family policies
and post-communist family policies in Central Europe (Heinen and Wator, 2006;
Bicksel, 2006; Saxonberg and Sirovátka, 2006; Saxonberg and Szelewa 2007).
However, the question remains why the Central European countries enacted such
policies in the Communist era. Perhaps the main pillars underlying these policies
were already in place before the communist regimes came to power?
Historical and Sociological Institutional Explanations
In contrast to the theories on female mobilization or the influence of international
organizations, which emphasize current conditions, historical institutionalists
emphasize the importance of decisions that are made in previous periods, which set
countries on difference trajectories (Mahoney, 2000; Peters, Pierre and King, 2005).
They note that once countries follow a certain path, it becomes difficult to leave this
path, hence the term "path dependency."
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It is most common to call a period a "critical juncture" (Collier and Collier,
1991), when a decision is made that sets a country down a new path. Even though
theorists of path dependency originally claimed that a critical juncture arose when
exogenous shocks caused crises (Pierson, 2000: 266), we argue that the critical
choices made concerning family policy might not seemed very important at the time
have; neither were the actors necessarily aware how seemingly small decisions might
have great impact at a later date. Small choices about institutional arrangements can
have great impact at a later date (Berman, 1998; Pierson, 2000). Thus, although
some theorists (i.e. Rothstein 1992) point out that actors might not correctly predict
the outcomes of their choices, we go one step further in arguing that they might not
even be aware that they are making a critical decision that will have an important
impact on further policy development. Moreover, as Kenny (2007: 95) notes,
"seemingly neutral institutional processes and practices are in fact embedded in
hidden norms and values, privileging certain groups over others." Thus, for example,
the decision to move nurseries to the Ministry of Health might seem to be neutral
concerning gender relations, but this study shows, this decision turned out to have
great impact for future gender relations in Central Europe.
It is common to focus on one critical juncture, but we see institutional
development as a continuous process in which several critical junctures might arise,
although the decisions undertaken at a second critical juncture are greatly influenced
by the path taken during the first critical juncture, etc. Our approach comes close to
Haydu's (1998) notion of "sequenced problem solving" in which policy makers
make important decisions that influence the path of development, but these decisions
are based on previous decisions. However, we disagree with Haydu's argument that
policy makers make these important decisions to solve problems that are directly
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related to the outcomes. On the contrary, important decisions were not necessarily
made to solve issues that policymakers perceived as grave problems at the time, but
rather were often the byproducts of other decisions.
Our model can be illustrated by diagram 1. At point A policy makers must
choose between two possibilities, B1 or B2. Once they choose one of these options,
they go down a different path, but at a later stage they once again will face important
choices at a new critical juncture. If they choose B1 instead of B 2, then at some point
they will have to choose between C1 and C 2 but they will not consider C3 and C4, to
be an option. However, if they choose B2 instead of B1 then at a later date they will
have to choose between C3 and C4, but they will not consider C1 or C 2 to be an
option. The same logic applies to critical juncture D, etc.
DIAGRAM ABOUT HERE
However, despite the importance of earlier decisions setting a country down a
particular path, it is possible for countries that originally sailed down different paths
to eventually merge as they do at point D4. Thus, our model also shows how
countries that originally went down somewhat different paths still can converge at
later stages.
DIAGRAM 1 TO BE PLACED ABOUT HERE
Our approach also comes close to what Streeck and Thelen (2005: 9) consider
to be incremental by gradual transformation, rather than by abrupt change. Our
article comes close to the way Streeck and Thelen's modified usage of the term
"layering" to allow for the continuous adding of new layers of policies over old ones
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(which contrasts to Thelein's 2004 original limitation of layers as policies that
expanded to include new groups). They point out that political actors introduce
important changes that they initially sell as only corrections in order not to "provoke
countermobilization by defenders of the status quo" (Streeck and Thelen 2005: 23).
Our study goes one step further in arguing that changes, which turn out to be
important might not even seem important at the time, which means that policymakers
do not always even need to "sell" the changes.
In contrast to purely historical approaches, we combine historical
institutionalism with sociological institutionalism (Hall and Taylor 1996: 948) that
emphasizes the manner in which institutions influence norms and attitudes. As
Pierson (2000) notes, institutions influence the manner in which we filter
information into "existing mental maps." While agreeing with Pierson on this point,
we disagree with his conception of countries constantly moving down one clear path
(because of the "increasing returns" of staying on path), but rather, we see that each
choice at a critical juncture pushes the country in a slightly different direction. We
should also note that even if we do not see a country following a straight line down a
clear path, we do agree with other theorists that a certain "logic of appropriateness"
arises, which induces policy makers to think that certain policies are more
"appropriate than others," even if they are not the most efficient. Moreover, we agree
with Chappell's (2006: 226) emphasis on the gendered biasness of what can be
considered appropriate.
In other words, institutions and culture continuously interact with each other.
When policy makers make choices at critical junctures, they are influenced by
dominating cultural norms, as well as by norms within their own groups (such as the
Communist Party). However, once they make choices these institutional changes in
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turn influence culture by creating a certain logic of appropriateness. Because of
limits of space, we will concentrate on the manner in which institutions create logics
of appropriateness, rather than analyzing all of the factors that influence decisions at
each period. This has the advantages of emphasizing how institutional changes create
their own dynamics including influencing the "existing mental maps."
Empirical Analysis
Our analysis focuses on four critical junctures and in all four cases, it is extremely
doubtful whether the policy makers could have imagined what kind of impact these
decisions would have on post-communist society:
1) the incorporation of the two-tier model of separate care for younger
and older pre-school children in late nineteenth century,
2) the decision in the first half of the twentieth century to make
kindergartens for pre-school children from the age of three a fixed part of the
national schooling system under the supervision of the Ministry of Education,
3) the decision in 1950s to place nurseries for children under three
under the supervision of the Ministry of Health,
4) the decision in 1960s to introduce a paid "extended maternity leave".
The First Critical Juncture: the Adaptation of the Two-Tier Model
The roots of public childcare in the territory of contemporary Czech Republic,
Hungary and Slovakia date back to the nineteenth century when the area was part of
Austrian Empire. Poland was partitioned by three different countries: Austria,
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Germany and Russia. All four countries from the beginning established a two-tier
system of nurseries for children under three and kindergartens for older children.
Nurseries originally came about in the 1850s so that poor mothers could work
both in the Austrian Empire (Fellner, 1884; Lederer, 2001) and in the Polish
territories (Pietrusiński, 1958). Kindergartens also emerged in this period, but
originally they were based on the model that Fröbel developed in Germany, which
had pedagogical goals rather than the goal of enabling women to work. Since
kindergartens charged fees and were only open 4-5 hours per day, they mainly
catered to the middle class (Mišurcová, 1980). However, in contrast to the pure
Fröbelian pedagogical model, a second type of kindergarten emerged in the Austrian
Empire, known as "Volkkindergartens." They combined Fröbelian pedagogy with
the long open hours, so that poor mothers could work (Fellner, 1884; Helm, 1851;
Heckel, 1969). Another important difference is that the "Volkkindergartens" taught
in the national languages of the area, while the Kindergartens taught in German.
Consequently, the "Volkkindergartens" became much more popular and widespread
since they supported the increasing national aspirations of the Czechs, Hungarians,
Poles and Slovaks.
Hungarian nationalism was more highly developed in the early 1800s than in
the Czech, Slovak and Polish territories and eventually achieved equal status in the
1860s as the empire renamed itself Austro-Hungarian. In contrast to the rest of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, kindergartens in Hungary went under the Ministry of
Education, as the government saw promoting the Hungarian language as one of the
key purposes for these institutions. Nevertheless, this ministry shared its
responsibility with the Ministry of Interior (Bicksel, 2006: 156-158).
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In the Czech lands, the majority of kindergartens were German in the 1800s.
Czech nationalists criticized this and established an association for promoting Czech
"Volkkindergartens" to train children to enter Czech rather than German schools
(Mišurcová, 1980).
In the Polish case, "Volkkindergartens" were quite rare and instead a third
type dominated, called "ochronki". These "ochronki" often incorporated pedagogical
tasks, making them in practice similar to the "Volkkindergarten." In the Russian
sector they became centers of social resistance against the tsarist Russification of
Polish children and the youth (Lepalczyk, 1988: 74).
This development can help explain why the communist governments met
little resistance when they decided to sharply increase the number of kindergartens
when coming to power. It can also help explain the fact that while post-communist
governments with conservative views toward gender roles, drastically cut back
support for nurseries (except Hungary), they did not decrease support much for
kindergartens. Whereas they tended to see nurseries as a "communist" idea (since the
communists radically expanded them during their rule), kindergartens still rang a
positive tone among conservative nationalists.
In 1872 the first critical juncture arose in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as it
institutionalized the incorporation of the two-tier model of nurseries for children
under three and kindergartens for children from the age of three with the Imperial
School Act from that year. Kindergartens were supposed to care and educate
children under control of School Offices (§17) while nurseries only had to follow
basic sanitary guidelines (§27). This act thus codified the division of pre-school
children into two groups and ingrained into society the notion that only children over
three should be included into kindergartens, which also reinforced the notion that
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two-year old children were fundamentally different than three-year old children and
should be treated differently. In contrast, for example, in both the United States and
Sweden nurseries have been open for pre-school children of all ages.3
Consequently,
in these countries no such discourse has emerged that separates pre-school children
into two age groups, even though Sweden actually did have kindergartens for 3-6
year olds until the late 1970s-early 1980s.
In Poland, the situation was a little more complicated, as only the Austrian
controlled sector was directly influenced by the Imperial School Act, but the other
sectors had the same division and this division was codified when the country gained
independence in 1918 (Kurcz, 2005: 24). It would have been difficult to imagine this
at that time, but this institutional division was to have great impact on gender roles a
century later.
The Second Critical Juncture: The Definition of Kindergartens as Educational
Facilities and their further Separation from Nurseries
As already noted, the kindergartens, "Volkkindergartens" and the "ochronki" all had
pedagogical goals. Nevertheless, with the exception of Hungary, both kindergartens
and nurseries were under the supervision of the Ministry of Social Care.
Kindergarten teachers saw themselves, though, as pedagogues and fought to have
their institutions placed under the Ministry of Education (i.e. Mišurcová, 1980).
In Poland, this move to the Ministry of Education took place already in 1932
when the Education System Act (Journal of Laws, no. 38, item 389) codified
kindergartens as part of the educational system, thus giving rise to the second critical
juncture. The Preschool Educational Department at the Ministry of Religious
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Persuasions/Denominations and Public Education now took responsibility for
running kindergartens (Graniewska, 1971: 15).
In Czechoslovakia and Hungary this reform did not come about until the
communists came to power. In 1948 the second critical juncture arose in
Czechoslovakia as the communist regime introduced legislation to move
responsibility for kindergartens from the Ministry of Social Care to the Ministry of
Education (Act on Unified Education No. 95/1948 Coll.). This was part of a general
shift in all Stalinist countries as the official ideology proclaimed that under socialism
the economy would provide for everyone's needs, so no ministry of social affairs,
welfare or social caring was necessary. In Czechoslovakia, the government dissolved
the Ministry of Social Care in 1951 (Schiller 1971).
In Hungary, kindergartens were under the joint supervision of the Ministries of
Education and Interior, but in 1945 the Ministry of Welfare took over the main
responsibility from the Ministry of Interior (Bicksel, 2006: 162). 1949 became a
critical juncture as the Ministry of Education took over the main responsibility from
the Ministry of Welfare which was about to be abolished by the new Stalinist
leadership (Bicksel, 2006: 163).
If these governments would not have divided the responsibility for nurseries
and kindergartens to different ministries, the separation of the two age groups would
not necessarily have been permanent. Attempts at combining these facilities in the
1960s failed in Czechoslovakia because the carers of children under three still came
under the jurisdiction of a different ministry than the carers of children 3-5 and thus
had to still follow different legal requirements, which made it too complicated to run
joint facilities.4
Thus, for example, they could not follow the Swedish path for
quickly building out daycare. There both nurseries and kindergartens remained under
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one ministry, which prevented infighting between ministries over the jurisdiction of
childcare facilities. This made it possible for the government to create a generous
one-tier system by radically building out crches (which were open for children 0-6)
until they gradually almost completely replaced kindergartens (that were reserved for
children 3-6) (Johansson and stedt, 1993) without angering a ministry that might
have lost control over the disappearing kindergartens.
Finally, we should note that even if all three governments followed Stalin's
productionist policy of building out childcare facilities so that mothers could work,
Poland still lagged behind Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Antoni Rajkiewiecz, who
was Minister of Labor and Social Affairs in 1981-82, claims that the main reason
why the Polish regime did not decide to build out childcare facilities as much as in
the other communist countries, is that it faced opposition from the Catholic Church,
which had much greater influence in Catholic Poland than in the more secular
Czechoslovakia and Hungary even before 1989.5
The Third Critical Juncture: Nurseries and the Creation of the Health Problem
While kindergartens came under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education, in the
early 1950s, the Ministry of Health took over responsibility for running the
nurseries. In Poland this third critical juncture arose in 1950 (Graniewska, 1971: 31;
Przybylska, 1988: 103), while in Czechoslovakia it was in 1952.6
Whereas the
previous system viewed care of children under three more in terms of being a social
issue (so that poor mothers could work), a medical model emerged in 1950s (Tekla,
2007: 33). Even though the nurses were specialized in care for small children, their
education was primarily medical (Klíma, 1969: 80; Jančíková, 1979: 10).
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The Central European countries moved nurseries to the ministries of health
for several reasons. Communist dogma prescribed that the ministries of social
welfare close down, since "socialist economics" was supposed to solve all social
problems; thus, there would be no more need to have a ministry dealing with social
issues. The Soviet Union had already defined its nurseries as healthcare facilities, so
the new communist states were expected to follow suit. It was also part of a
communist healthcare reform aiming to decrease infant and child mortality and
illness rate as well as to ensure acute and preventive healthcare (Sinkulová 1950;
Janouch 1951).
The Stalinist era also created a productionist view that the state should
radically built out nurseries to enable women to remain in the workforce, without
considering pedagogical-psychological issues for children. The state saw nurseries as
economic units, and as such they were more "efficient" if the ratio of children per
children's nurse and nursery was rather high. Consequently, nurseries received rather
poor reputations for their supposedly low quality and for being overcrowded.
Because of the problem of overcrowedness, children did not receive the attention
they needed and it became easier for illnesses to spread among the children
(Heitlinger 1996; Götting 1998: 228; Čermáková et al., 2000: 92). Thus, writing
already under communist rule, Przybylska (1988: 104) claimed in Poland that if
nurseries had adhered to the Ministry of Education, the quality of care would have
increased, as the nurseries would have been able to employ psychologists and
pedagogues instead of nurses.
In Czechoslovakia discussions also arose about moving the nurseries to the
Ministry of Education in order to make it possible to introduce more child-centered
caring (Klíma 1969). The discourse on illnesses of children under the age of three
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(rooted in the 1950s institutional arrangement) successfully blocked such attempts at
institutional reform. Again the link between historical and sociological
institutionalism becomes clear, as previous institutional change (moving nurseries to
the Ministry of Health) also influences the norms and cultural values of the policymakers,
who continued to see nurseries as a health issue rather than a pedagogical or
child psychology issue, which in turn prevented the development of more humanistic
childcare for children under three.
Despite the problems of communist nurseries becoming healthcare facilities, it
appears that Hungary in the 1970s began reforming them and started to place more
emphasis on non-medical issues, as the country under the rule of Janos Kádár went
in a more reformist-liberalizing direction. In the more open Hungarian climate,
researchers and policy-makers were able to come into contact with more humanistic,
international trends concerning childcare. This induced Hungarian policy makers and
researchers, who were responsible for childcaring facilities, to take such steps as
encouraging parents to attend the nurseries with their children during the first two
weeks to allow their children to become accustomed to the atmosphere.7
Thus, in
turn, cut down on frequent traumatic experience of infants crying as their parents
dropped them off at the nurseries. In Czechoslovakia, by contrast, the Warsaw Pact
invasion stopped the country's opening to the West, which also meant that those in
charge of nursery policies were more cut-off than their Hungarian neighbors from
international trends toward a more child-centered childcare (while Polish policymakers
also become more cut-off than Hungarians in the aftermath of reprisals after
protests in 1968, 1970, 1980-81). To this day, images of mothers leaving crying
children comprise the common horror story about the supposed evils of nurseries in
the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The official reason for not letting parents spend
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some time with their children so that they could become accustomed to their new
settings was that it would be a health risk!
The Fourth Critical Juncture: Introduction of the "Extended Maternity Leave"
In the 1960s, demographers, psychologists and pediatricians began questioning
the policy of promoting childcare services for children under three as fertility rates
fell in a situation where women increasingly worked, while childcare places were not
enough to meet demand, labor shortages had subsided, and nurseries came under
increasing criticism. Kindergartens remained much more popular than nurseries, as
the population did not perceive them merely as places for storing children so that
mothers could work; instead they saw kindergartens as having strong pedagogical
roles, as teachers rather than nurses took care of the children there.
The definition of young children under three as a health issue was a part of
the Stalinist productionist view of the early 1950s that continued to dominate among
the communist elite. This view contributed to arguments for introducing extended
maternity leaves in the region: if the main goal of nurseries was to enable women to
work and women were the sole childcarers at home, then if their children became
sick, mothers must leave their jobs to stay at home and take care of their children.
Moreover, if children got sick, the capacity of nurseries was not fully utilized. A
logic of appropriateness arose that encouraged the communist rulers to introduce
extended maternity leaves, as from the producionist viewpoint, it was more efficient
if women stayed at home for the whole period of three years than to subsidize
nurseries, that were partially empty due to sickness.
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Of course, theoretically, it would have been possible to fight declining
fertility rates by making it easier for women to balance work and family life by
improving the standards of daycare and by encouraging fathers to share in the
childraising chores. However, given the gendered logic of appropriateness, the
policy makers never considered the policy of promoting equal gender roles at the
home, as they still considered childcaring to be solely a female duty; consequently,
they never gave fathers the right to take childcare leaves (Hašková, 2007; Saxonberg,
2003). And given the institutional obstacles to creating combined childcaring
institutions for children 0-6 (such as the fact that responsibility for children over and
below three belonged to two different ministries), rather than considering the
introduction of father leaves or changing the healthcare character of the nurseries,
the obvious gender-biased choice of the policy makers was to induce mothers to stay
at home for longer periods, so that they would not have to build as many new
nurseries.
Consequently, the leaders followed the advise of demographers and decided to
encourage women to have children by making it easier for them to stay at home.
Thus, in late 1960s a fourth critical juncture arose as the communist regime decided
to introduce an extra "extended maternity leave." In Czechoslovakia the leave was
introduced in 1964 and was supposed to successively increase to three years to
reduce reliance on nurseries (Klíma, 1969). Thus, this extended leave pushed
Czechoslovakia down a more conservative path of development, by inducing
mothers to stay at home for long periods. By the 1980s most mothers stayed at home
at least two years, while in the 1960s the majority stayed at home less than two years
and 42% for at most one year (Hašková and Uhde, 2009).
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Meanwhile, Poland began moving down a more liberal path, as it extended
maternity leave benefits that were originally unpaid, then they became means-tested
(Balcerzak-Paradowska, 1995: 55). The former Minister of Labor and Social Affairs,
Antoni Rajkiewiecz, recalls the logic of appropriateness behind their decision to
make the benefit means-tested rather than universal: given the fact that Poland had
given less support for childcare facilities than the other communist countries, the
demand of mothers to use a universal extended maternity leave would have been
greater than in the other countries, as the childcare alternatives were not as available.
Thus, a universal benefit would have been more expensive to implement than in the
other countries, so for financial reasons they made the benefits means-tested.8
Hungary also introduced an extended leave in the 1960s. In 1967 the
government introduced the GYES benefit that paid a flat rate for two years. In 1969
it was extended another half year, so that after the initial 6-month maternity leave,
mothers received money for staying at home until the child reached the age of three
(Haney, 2002: 104). Populist-nationalist intellectuals argued that the flat rate system
rewarded the poorer, "undeserving elements" and cost the country "intellectual
capital," since the wealthier, better educated groups had less incentive to have
children. The vice-minister in charge of family issues also seems to have played an
important role personally in coming up with the suggestion for introducing an
extended maternity leave based on the income replacement principle. She claims her
main motivation was that birthrates had been falling and she wanted to encourage
women with higher incomes to also have children.9
Based on her recommendation,
in 1985 the government introduced the GYED alternative, which allowed mothers to
receive 75% of their salary for two years after completing their maternity leave
(which paid 100% for 6 months). This shows that decisions at critical junctures are
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not necessarily structurally predetermined: actors in decision-making positions can
have great influence.
Thus, already before the collapse of communism, important differences in
family policies emerged and these differences remain today. Although all the Central
European countries succumbed to EU pressure and opened up their parental leaves
for fathers, Hungary continues to have the most generous system with a parental
leave that now pays 70% of one's previous salary; Poland continues to have a
means-tested parental leave; while both the Czech Republic and Slovakia basically
have a flat-rate system. In addition, when it comes to childcare, kindergartens
continue to be much more popular than nurseries in all four countries than nurseries,
but Poland continues to stand out as giving much less support to kindergartens than
its neighbors. The big change is that while nurseries have almost completely
disappeared in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the percentage of children
under three attending nurseries in Hungary has only declined slightly, which could
be partially due to the fact that nurseries in that country had better reputations, since
they followed more the international trends toward developing more child-centered,
humanistic nurseries. Another possible reason is in Hungary nationalist politicians
wanted to keep some nurseries open in order to promote pronatalist policies and they
realized that whether they liked it or not, most Hungarian women work, so they
would not have as many children if nurseries were closed down. 10
In
Czechoslovakia, by contrast, no discourse emerged that linked nurseries to fertility
rates.
Even if the demand for childcaring places remains higher than the supply (so
that parents in the Czech and Slovak Republics, for example, often try to find places
in kindergartens for their two-year old children), because of the past policy
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developments, as sociological institutionalism would expect, attitudes toward
nurseries became generally negative and the belief became widespread that mothers
should stay at home with their children until they are three (Pavlík, 1985; Hašková,
2007). International public opinion surveys also reflect this as Central Europeans
differ greatly from West Europeans on the question of whether pre-school children
suffer if the mother works, since they are afraid of the effects of nurseries on the
children (Saxonberg and Sirovátka, 2006).
Thus we see how the artificial cut-off point of three years for kindergartens,
coupled with the disscussions on the poor manner of organizing nurseries and the
introduction of "extended maternity leaves" all contributed to the creation of the
dogma that the mother should stay at home until the child is three years old. This, in
turn, made it much easier for the post-communist governments to cut-off support for
nurseries and let them disappear everywhere except in Hungary, which once again
shows how historical insitutional developments interact with sociological
institutionalism to influence cultural norms.
Conclusion
This article shows that path dependency should be conceived of as a collection of
choices at various critical junctures rather than one single change made at a critical
juncture. One decision, such as the codification of nurseries for children 0-3 and
kindergartens for children 3-5 can set countries down different paths (for example
point B2 instead of B1 in Diagram 1), so that, it was easier in the countries with a
two-tier system for the dogma to arise that pre-school children under three have
much different needs than pre-school children above three and that it is best for
children to stay at home with their mother under their first three years. It was more
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difficult for this dogma to arise, in contrast, in countries that historically did not
divide pre-school children into these two age groups (i.e. the USA and Sweden).
But even at this stage a discourse about it being "natural" for children to be at
home during the first three years did not have to automatically emerge. It required
further choices at later critical junctures, such as the decisions to move kindergartens
to the ministries of education and nurseries to the ministries of health in the
communist countries (for the sake of simplicity, we have combined both choices into
one a point C4), which led to the introduction of various forms of extended maternity
leaves that induced mothers to stay at home for three years after giving birth (points
D5-7). In other countries, such as Denmark, where nurseries were not moved to
ministries of health, nurseries never developed such poor reputations and thus gained
more popular support, which in turn prevented a discourse from emerging about it
being "proper" for children to stay at home during the first three years (point C3). As
a result, the "logic of appropriateness" in Denmark did not induce it to introduce
extended maternity leaves (points D5-D7); instead it introduced an insurance-based
parental leave that was open for both parents and similar to the Norwegian and
Swedish leaves (except for the absence of father quotas; point D4). Thus, the
particular path of the post-communist countries, including the differences in their
more recent paths of development did not come about because of one single decision
at a particular critical juncture, but rather because of a combination of decisions at
four critical junctures.
This approach comes close to Streeck and Thelen's (2005) usage of layering,
as important decisions that set a country still further down one path or another are
made upon previous choices. However, in contrast to the mainstream literature on
historical institutionalism that stresses the notion of critical junctures coming at
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periods of exogenous shocks, no evidence exists, for example, that when policymakers
decided to move nurseries to the Ministry of Health, anybody expected that
this decision would have any important influence on either gender relations or the
quality of childcare. So in contrast to Streeck and Thelen's discussion (2005, 23), the
communist officials did not need to modify their language to hide the importance of
the changes in order not to "provoke countermobilizaiton by defenders of the status
quo." On the contrary, it seems that not even defenders of the status quo thought this
change would be of any importance.
The importance of this decision did not become clear until the 1960s, when
the nurseries came under increasing criticism for offering low quality care and being
overcrowded, while the authorities worried about the high rate of sickness arising
from the facilities being overcrowded. Given the gendered logic of appropriateness,
in the 1960s the communist rulers decided to deal with the problems of the nurseries,
not by improving them and moving them to a different ministry and not by
encouraging fathers to stay at home with the children, but rather by introducing
extended maternity leaves on the grounds that as long as mothers had to stay at home
often with their sick children, they might as well stay at home for the whole threeyear
period to take care of their children so the state could reduce expenses on
nurseries, as their full capacity was not used because of high sickness rates.
Even though this approach combines historical institutionalism with
sociological institutionalism by emphasizing how these institutional developments
influenced attitudes and how attitudes influenced decisions at critical junctions, this
is not a deterministic model. For example, Hungary followed a relatively more
universalistic direction than either Czechoslovakia or Poland by first introducing a
lump sum benefit that was more generous than in the other countries and then by
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introducing an extended leaves that replaced 75% of the mother's income. The
decision to introduce this more generous income-replacement leave was partly the
result of pressure from intellectuals, which did not exist in Poland or
Czechoslovakia, who criticized the flat-rate benefits for encouraging only poorer
families to have children and partly the creativity of the vice-minister, who wanted to
encourage wealthier mothers to have more children. The role of the vice-minister
shows that at critical junctures, actors can have great influence on outcomes.
Large exogenous shocks such as the collapse of communism turned out to be
less important for family policies than decisions, which seemed unimportant at the
time, such as moving responsibility for nurseries to the ministries of health and the
ensuing decisions that communist leaders made in dealing with the problems created
by health-based nurseries that neglected the pedagogical and psychological needs of
children.
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REFERENCES
Anxo, D., Fagan, C., Smith, M., Letablier, M.T. and Peraudin, C. (2007). Parental
Leave in European Companies. Brussels: European Foundation for the Improvement
of Living and Working Conditions.
Balcerzak-Paradowska, B. (1995). Poland's Policy Towards Family. In: Families in
Poland. Evolution. Differentiation. Transformation Period--Golinowska, S. and
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Table 1: Enrolment rates of children in public pre-school facilities
1989 2002* 2008**
Age of
children
0-2 3-5 0-2 3-5 0-2 3-5
Czech
Republic
20.3
(13.2 in nurseries)
78.9 10.3
(0.7 in nurseries)
94.7 6.2 79.1
Hungary 11.7
(11.2 in nurseries)
85.7 10.1
(9.6 in nurseries)
87.8 10.9 88.6
Poland 9.1
(8.7 in nurseries)
48.2 5.1
(4.2 in nurseries)
49.9 3.8 59.6
Slovakia 17.7
(15.0 in nurseries)
88.6 5.6
(0.0 in nurseries)
80.1 5.0 73.5
Germany 5.0 82.0 21.2 89.4
Sweden 37.0 77.0 44.0 85.5
EU-15 25.0 81.0 36.2 80.9
Source: Saxonberg and Sirovátka (2006) for years 1989, 2000 and 2002. Year 2008
from the TransMONEE data base downloaded on 18 September 2009 at
http://www.transmonee.org.
* Data on Germany, Sweden and EU-15 from 2000.
** Data on Germany, Sweden and EU-15 from 2006, from OECD Family Database
downloaded on 1 July 2009 at http://www.oecd.org/.11
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1
However, in practice, employers often find ways around such rules (Riedman,
2006; Anxo et al., 2007).
2
This discussion is mostly based on Saxonberg and Sirovátka (2006) and Saxonberg
and Szelewa (2007).
3
The US does have one year of mandatory kindergarten for all 5 year olds, where
children attend classes in primary schools and Sweden now has also moved the last
year of pre-school to the primary schools.
4
Governmental edict no. 72/1961 Coll. on establishing of nurseries and kindergarten
in joint facilities, and Act no. 87/1980 Coll. on kindergartens, joint nursery and
kindergarten facilities and children asylums.
5
Inerview with Antoni Rajkiewiecz, in Warsaw in May, 2007.
6
Act of the Ministry of Health on unified preventive and medical care no. 130/1951
Coll., and on organizing of preventive and medical care no. 24/1952 Coll.
7
Interview with people at the Hungarian Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs,
especially Márta Korintus, researcher at the Research Institute of the Ministry of
Social Affairs, in Budapest on January 24, 2008.
8
Inerview with Antoni Rajkiewiecz, in Warsaw in May, 2007.
9
Interview with Judit Csehák, former minister of social affairs in 1980s and 2000-
2002, in Budapest on January 23, 2008.
10
We are basing this on around 20 interviews with Hungarian politicians, ministry
officials, political advisors and NGOs in Hungary in 2008.
11
We use the TransMONEE data base for the post-communist countries, because
they get their data directly from the official statistical offices of all the postcommunist
countries. While the OECD data appears to be relatively reliable for the
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EU15 countries, its statistics deviate radically at times from both the TransMONEE
data base and the official yearbooks of the individual countries.
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