McGill Journal of Political Studies 2014 April, 2014 | Page 82

better results in terms of quality of life and hostility towards Roma, to resurge. This
reduction in inequalities than countries caused a waning, halting or even reversal of
using an Anglo-Saxon model12.
measures encouraging Roma inclusion. This
argument is drawn from Böhmelt’s theory
Hypothesis
on conditionality13.
This paper hypothesizes that during
Second, the principle of subsidiarityand in the years immediately following -keeping the EU out of direct, detailed
the accession process, substantial legal and policy-making in areas related to Roma
policy reform in the area of Roma rights inclusion--pushes the burden of this policywere implemented. However, following making onto member-states, and their
accession, the implementation of reform regional or local governments. Thus, with
slowed or halted. This is because incentives political energy for reform originating
to reform declined while obstacles to further at the EU level, well-intentioned reform
reform grew. Because of the difficulty of efforts are derailed or diluted by the several
gathering sufficiently consistent and clear layers of political resistance and bureaucracy
data on many areas of European integration, that they must overcome, limiting the
those variables that have consistent effectiveness of these efforts in creating
measurement and available data, while still better policy outcomes.
acting as reasonable measurements of social
Third, as models of social welfare
inclusion, will be used as one measurement develop in the Czech Republic, Hungary
of success. The case studies used in this and Romania, they tended to embrace
paper as representative of the level of either the Anglo-Saxon liberal model or
social inclusion will be the level of school the Continental corporatist model. These
segregation for Roma children in each models exclude the already underemployed
country and the Roma unemployment rate, Roma from access to a “leg-up,” keeping
contrasted with the general unemployment them locked in poverty and the social
rate at the time period measured. These exclusion that comes with this; This is
factors are excellent representations of social extrapolated from Neesham and Tache’s
inclusion due to their importance to Roma work on emerging European social models,
living standards. Additionally, due to the itself drawn from Esping-Andersen’s
limited data available and different accession typology of welfare states14.
periods for Romania and Bulgaria, the three
Case Study 1: Segregation in Pre-School and
countries examined in this paper will be the
Primary School
Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. As
these three countries all acceded to the EU
Schools are important areas of social
at the same time, they provide a reasonable contact within and between communities.
temporal benchmark for analysis on progress Thus, segregation of Roma children in
in terms of Roma integration.
the school system is a clear sign of social
First, while the accession process gave exclusion. In 2003, one year before the
the EU political le