Over the last decades, the European concepts of welfare and related social policy have repeatedly been subjected to a critique of being over-lax and of needing expenditure cuts. Social policy under socialism has also been considered extensively. In her paper, the author claims that the welfare regimes under socialism shared the tradition of the corporatist welfare state in both timing and insertion. She re-considers this well accepted thesis in a contextual framework where class-coalitions are a major corner-stone. Sloveniaand some other countries which share the legacy of late industrialisation with the strong impact of the Catholic Church, and also the Communist rule, are taken into account to test this thesis. Since the corporatist welfare regime is known to focus on industrial workers and employees under separate schemes, the author has discovered that the self-employed were for a long time excluded from welfare in all the countries considered. Moreover, they did not manage to attract any power elite to fight politically for their welfare interests. Regardless of sometimes radical political changes, as analytical findings prove, welfare regimes under re-consideration have manage to preserve their major features. Without doubt, these regimes have altered during the course of their existence, but more frequently by extension than by transformation and reduction.
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