The countries of the former Soviet bloc were among the world's most generous welfare states. Today these countries face a double challenge: they must both scale back or restructure a variety of popular programs and create new programs to deal with unemployment and poverty. Academic research on these countries, however, has largely ignored social policy reform. My dissertation attempts to fill this gap by answering two questions: (1) What factors explain country differences in social policy reform? (2) What makes some areas of social policy easier to reform than others? The countries are the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. The areas of social policy are housing, health care, pensions, and social safety nets.