Date:
Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - 3:30pm to 5:10pm
Attempts at categorizing East Central European welfare states into existing or new typologies led to inconsistent findings and often very vague labels in order to classify rather diverse entities under a single type. This paper (briefly) considers the use of typologies in comparative social science research more generally and in comparative welfare state research in particular. Then I reflect on the reasons behind the vague and inconsistent categorization of East Central European welfare states in the existing literature. Based on this empirical work, I extract implications for the utility of typologies and their role in comparative social science research.