The fall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe raised the complex 
question of how social services were to be distributed and 
administered in countries with legacies of highly centralized states. 
When Poland underwent a series of reforms to modify and 
decentralize social service programs, long-held and clearly specified 
reform goals were undermined from the very outset.

    In this carefully argued study, Janelle A. Kerlin demonstrates how 
and why reforms, intended to improve services and increase citizen 
participation in social service programming, largely failed to meet 
expected goals. The politics of reform development—including 
political deals, exclusionary tactics, and hidden maneuvering by 
Polish policymakers—prevented any significant upgrade of services 
or real change in decision-making structures. Conflicting ideologies 
and pressures on policy actors stemming from historical, 
institutional, political, and international sources often resulted in 
compromises that led to unfavorable public service outcomes.

    Kerlin uses focused interviews with leading reform actors and a 
nationwide representative survey of two hundred public social 
service institutions to develop a model that connects the politics of 
the decentralization process with social service outcomes.

    Not only students of the former Soviet bloc but also those 
interested in the links between politics and policy outcomes more 
broadly will find in this volume an informative and instructive case 
study that has far-reaching implications.

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JANELLE A. KERLIN holds a Ph.D. in political science from 
Syracuse University. A previous Woodrow Wilson Research Scholar, 
she now lives in Atlanta, Georgia.


Eugenia and Hugh M. Stewart '26 Series on Eastern Europe


What people are saying about this book

". . . makes an outstanding contribution to the literature that links 
policy development with policy implementation."—Douglas Ihrke, 
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee