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The Transformation of the Welfare State in the Republic of North Macedonia

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The Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Change

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Abstract

This chapter will analyze the changes in the welfare state in the Republic of North Macedonia that occur over a longer period of time since the early 1990s. In the analysis of the transformation of the welfare state, special attention will be paid to the transformation of the social protection system, the pension and health care system. The transformation of the welfare state in North Macedonia does not differ much from that in other post-communist countries, but it has certain specifics. The reason is that in the transformation of the welfare state two factors have an important place: external and internal ones. External factors were globalization and its instruments such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which in all post-communist countries recommended similar neoliberal policies for reduction of public spending on welfare services and privatization in the area of pension and health insurance. Internal factors include the configuration of relationships between key institutions in a society, as well as the processes and conditions in institutions that provide welfare state services, such as the financial self-sufficiency of a pension or health insurance scheme. In this chapter we will get acquainted with the structural setup of certain segments of the welfare state but also their transformation, both at the level of legislation and at the level of services that the welfare state provides to citizens. It is a well-known fact that in the last 30 years in North Macedonia there is a process of increasing selectivity of the welfare state, as well as the reduction of the services it provides to the citizens. Here we will try to point out how and why it happened.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Balkan University, Skopje, Republic of Macedonia

    Kire Sharlamanov & Jana Petreska

Authors
  1. Kire Sharlamanov
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  2. Jana Petreska
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Work and Social Welfare, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Rajendra Baikady

  2. Department of Social Work, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India

    S.M. Sajid

  3. Department of Social Work, University of Johannesburg, Auckland Park, South Africa

    Varoshini Nadesan

  4. Centre for Family Research, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland

    Jaroslaw Przeperski

  5. Inst of Social Welfare & Res, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh

    M. Rezaul Islam

  6. Department of Social Work, Shandong University, Jinan, China

    Jianguo Gao

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Sharlamanov, K., Petreska, J. (2022). The Transformation of the Welfare State in the Republic of North Macedonia. In: Baikady, R., Sajid, S., Nadesan, V., Przeperski, J., Islam, M.R., Gao, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Change . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87624-1_359-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87624-1_359-1

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-87624-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-87624-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Social SciencesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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