Rethinking comparative childcare policy analysis: Example of Central and Eastern Europe

Comparative
research
routinely employ
s
a small number of indicators to compare
family
polic
ies across
countries. In these studies, government expenditure, participation of children in public childcare or length
of parental leave are
internationally recognised policy indicators
.
However,
the
y
have been subject of
academic controversy
and are less
adequate predictors of gendered policy incentives
.
This
paper
,
therefore,
theoretically and empirically explores and
discusse
s
how varieties of state de
-
familialism could
be more fully captured in a cross
-
country perspective. It
proposes a composite indic
ator for use in
gendered analysis of policy incentives
, one that
comprises the most salient features of
national
policies on
leave and childcare services
versus some combination of policy delivery and use
.
Thereby, it
pays
explicit
attention to the methodo
logical challenges and decisions that concern case selection, concept formation,
the role of counterfactuals, establishing of measurement validity, and multi
-
method design.
Finally, the
paper discusses the opportunities for future research that such approa
ch opens up. It empirically
explores
its applicability
on Ce
ntral and Eastern
EU member states
–
an
attempt which has gained little
methodologically substantiated attention so far
. Going beyond
the Western
welfare states it
demonstrate
s
its functionality a
nd shows
how
the
se
countries
could be integrated
in the corpus of comparative
welfare
state research
.