This article discusses the problems that occur when post-communist societies rebuild their welfare systems. The first section reconstructs the academic and political discourse on how to balance cost considerations and demands for `socral justice' in eastern and central Europe. It outlrnes four different polrcy options political actors have, to replace the old firm-based, state-budget financed, autboritarian social policy systems. Secondly, the unfavourable political preconditrons of social policy making are taken into account. Post-communist governments have great difficulties in finding sufficiently competent and powerful actors to perform social polrcy tasks in lieu of the party state, be it labour market organizations, pro fessional interest groups, local governments, or non-profit organizations. The third section attempts to explain the specific paths of social policy transformation chosen in four east and cerrtral European countries, namely Bulgaria, the Czech and Slovak Republics, and Hungary. In this section, agam, emphasis is laid on ana lytical issues rather than on presenting empiri cal findings. The aim is to sketch a preliminary framework for comparison that may be easily enriched with empirical data and further elab orated in future work. The concluding section briefly deals with the prospects of welfare state consolidation in the countrres surveyed.
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