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.

Eight essays connected by various common strands. The most important one is the community of the main subject-matter: socialism, capitalism, democracy, change of system. These four expressions cover four phenomena of great and comprehensive importance. Each piece in the book deals with these and the connections between them.

One of the Leitmotifs is the “capitalism/socialism” pair of opposites. Capitalism has a history of several hundred years, while the socialist regime existed only for a few decades. But this pair of opposites was central to the history of the twentieth century. This antagonism put its stamp on political thinking, on the foreign policy and military preparedness of every country, and on some appallingly destructive armed conflicts. All these had great secondary influence on each country’s economic development and the standard of living and disposition of its inhabitants.

None of the studies is confined to one country—not to Hungary or to any other. Each tries to embrace the problems common to greater units. However, the greater unit comprehended is not the same in each study. One may deal with the capitalist or socialist system in general, another will all the post-socialist countries, and a third the Central East European region. But all extend the analysis beyond the borders of one country.