Half Way Through the Ford: The Italian Welfare State at the Start of the New Century

Over the last two decades, the Italian welfare state went through two quite distinct-if not opposite-phases. Whereas the 1980s witnessed an apparent uncontrollable growth of social expenditure, during the 1990s Italy not only managed to achieve macroeconomic stabilization but also engaged for the first time over the postwar period in a comprehensive overhauling of its social protection system. Although the process is still largely under way and the end results are far from clear, the structural reforms passed from 1992 to 2001 represent a major breakthrough with respect to the institutional and policy legacy of the Italian social protection system. In order to place recent developments in perspective, I shall first provide some basic information on the social policies and politics of the eighties.