Two decades of scholarship on the politics of postcommunism have produced many notable studies. But policy-oriented work, regrettably, was relegated to the margins of this rapidly growing area of inquiry until at least the late 1990s. Since then, a fresh wave of comparative work devoted exclusively to the welfare states in Eastern and Central Europe finally began to appear in print. Linda Cook's Postcommunist Welfare States is an important new book that substantially enhances our understanding of the relationship between the processes of democratization and social policy reform.

The book focuses on the “liberalization” project that aimed at saving or restructuring the welfare states in countries emerging from the long period of crisis and stagnation under communist rule. Cook devotes three of her four case study chapters exclusively to Russia, her major area of expertise (Chapters 2–4). But she also compares Russia with other postcommunist states, including Poland and Hungary—offered as examples of “competitive multiparty democracies with effective legislatures and active trade unions”—and Kazakhstan and Belarus—offered as examples of “electoral authoritarian regimes dominated by strong executives that have marginalized political parties and legislatures and repressed unions” (p. 193). The addition of the latter two countries is especially welcome since most scholars in this subfield tend to concentrate either exclusively on Russia or on Central and Eastern Europe as the relatively more economically advanced regions of the former Soviet bloc.

The book is framed around the power resources theory previously developed by Cook in her coedited Left Parties and Social Policy in Postcommunist Europe (1999). This approach, rooted in the analysis of Western welfare states, emphasizes the preeminent role of political bargaining among societal interests in shaping public policy outcomes. But Cook combines an account of social interests with an examination of the development of political institutions, with a focus on the strength and effectiveness of democracy. This approach is especially fruitful in highlighting the active role of various societal groups and also elite stakeholders in influencing the dynamics of social policymaking in Russia during the 1990s and the early 2000s. With a very broad definition of “welfare state” that includes social policy, public assistance, health care, and education, Cook's argument represents a real advance on previous scholarship, which has tended to focus mostly on pensions and has lacked broader comparative perspective (e.g., Andrea Chandler, Shocking Mother Russia: Democratization, Social Rights, and Pension Reform in Russia, 1990–2001, 2001).

Cook raises many critical questions, and her book should stimulate further study. Her analysis underscores how much we have yet to learn about the evolution of welfare states in general, and postcommunist welfare states in particular. It also makes clear how demanding such research can be, combining economics and sociology as well as political science, and linking structural analysis with an account of the role of political agents in determining the shape of contemporary safety policy regimes. A further challenge to such research is what we might call the “transnational” dimension. The central challenger to Cook's core argument about the primacy of domestic politics in shaping social policy is a relatively new “global policy school,” which stresses the pivotal role of international financial institutions (IFIs) in influencing welfare systems around the world, and especially in Eastern Europe. She acknowledges “the significant role of the IFIs in shaping programmatic welfare state change (in Poland and Hungary) that has no parallel in the Western industrial democracies” (p. 241). Nevertheless, she also rejects sweeping generalizations regarding these external actors, and convincingly demonstrates the greater influence of domestic political agents. In addition, she draws a sharp distinction between countries with a stronger (Poland, Hungary, Kazakhstan) and weaker (Russia, Belarus) international presence. Still, her argument could be augmented by making a clearer differentiation between policy areas where IFIs have played a highly visible role (e.g., pensions, family policy) and those other areas (health care, education) where this was not the case to the same extent.

Another important contribution of Cook's book lies in the continuing exploration of the variations in policymaking and also, to some extent, in institution building within the postcommunist region. Previous studies—both those that defended the idea of rapid liberalization of social policy and those that advocated for a more social-democratic orientation—frequently neglected early signs of significant intraregional divergence in social policy transformation. In this regard, Cook's comparison of Russia, Poland, and Hungary represents an important correction to these arguments. At the same time, the comparison would have profited from greater attention to the particular institutions responsible for the implementation of policy—such as health-care funds and social security funds, for example. Moreover, a parallel, such as a more extensive comparison of Kazakhstan and Belarus—arguably much more difficult to conduct because of very limited access to research materials—could greatly enhance our understanding of policymaking in more authoritarian postcommunist settings.

While focusing exclusively on the post-1989 politics of social policy in both Russia and Eastern Europe, Cook acknowledges the role of path dependency even while refraining from more detailed discussion of the impact of the histories of the postcommunist welfare states. The evidence showing the rapid unraveling of the communist social contract under Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin is quite powerful, but more attention to the legacies of the past, and especially to the period immediately preceding the collapse of state socialism in all countries, would help better explain the variations across time and also across all countries examined in the book. Many of the political distinctions between Russia and the other post-Soviet states that Cook so nicely develops—especially the close links between greater interest pluralism (both inside and outside the formal governmental structures) and policy outcomes (social policy liberalization)—can indeed be traced back to the period of state socialism.

Postcommunist Welfare States is well written and accessible to readers who may not have had previous exposure to social policy literature. The addition of a full bibliography would have made the book somewhat more useful for scholars working in this area. Overall, however, I highly recommend the book to scholars of the welfare state and the former communist countries, but also to a broader audience of scholars interested in the study of regime change/democratization and the political economy of market/public policy reforms. It is to be hoped that this outstanding book will inspire comparative work of a similar kind in the future.