Social Welfare and Redistribution in Post-Communist Nations

Session Submission Type: Created Panel

Session Description

The panel discusses the opportunities and challenges that Eastern European nations and China face regarding social welfare and redistribution policies. Zuo & Huang investigate whether material benefits or the transparent and democratic procedure in poverty identification drives rural citizens' fairness judgment about China's Targeted Poverty Alleviation campaign. Sznajder Lee explores the divergent income redistribution policies of populist governments in Hungary and Poland while highlighting the differences in electoral competition and ties between business and government. Liu and Zhou examine how inter-jurisdiction political competition in China impacts local social welfare spending. The paper by Nagao and Bartlett Sanborn examines how political elites' individual characteristics influence the provision of different types of public goods in China while focusing on the elites' career incentives and payoff structures. Finally, the paper by Petrova and Petrova examines the relationship between party system institutionalization and economic inequality and redistribution in Central and Eastern Europe.

Sub Unit

• Division 13: Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries

Chair

• Mitchell A Orenstein University of Pennsylvania

Discussants

• Sarah Wilson Sokhey University of Colorado, Boulder

• Samantha Vortherms University of California, Irvine

Individual Presentations

• Benefit or Procedure? Determinants of Fairness Judgment in Rural China - Cai (Vera) Zuo; Xian Huang, Rutgers University

• Birds of Same Feather? Welfare Reforms in Populist Hungary and Poland Compared - Aleksandra Sznajder Lee, University of Richmond

• Interjurisdiction Political Competition and Social Welfare in China - Yanjun Liu, Peking University; Liwei Zhou, Peking University School of Government

• Who You Know Is Why You Spend: Provincial Public Goods Provision in the PRC - Haruka Nagao, University of Oregon; Howard Bartlett Sanborn, Oklahoma State University

• Ideology, Party System Institutionalization and Redistribution in Eastern Europe - Ana Petrova, University of Notre Dame; Bilyana Petrova, Texas Tech University