Reforming Child Welfare in the Post-Soviet Space: Institutional Change in Russia

How are global social policies transferred and adopted in nondemocratic settings such as Russia? The deinstitutionalization (DI) of child welfare as a coherent reform was introduced abruptly across Russia constituting almost experimental settings to study the process and outcomes of such ambitious policy reforms. The interdisciplinary research project on the recent child welfare reform and its implementation, led by Dr.Soc.Sc. Meri Kulmala, resulted in the book “Reforming Child Welfare in the Post-Soviet Space. Institutional Change in Russia” addressing three key questions. First, how global ideology based on the idea of child’s rights to a family has been adopted and applied in the Russian context? Second, how did the new policy alter the institutional design of childcare and grass-root practices in Russian regions; and what factors mediated the policy change? Third, what are the key consequences of the DI reform and what accounts for them? The book embraces sociological, anthropological and political science perspectives brought together by the neo-institutionalist framework to target multi-layered processes revolving around the reform.