ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the development of the welfare regime theory, starting with Richard Titmuss’ work and Esping-Andersen’s seminal work The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, which soon became a modern classic. The origin of welfare regime theory can be traced back to the work of Titmuss, whose main focus was the analysis of the redistributive capacities of states. The main blindspot in the original welfare state regime theory by Esping-Andersen was its lack of acknowledgment that the role of gender and women play in the provision of welfare, as historically decommodification is primarily applied to the male breadwinner. Clare Bambra’s analysis of the policy domain of health care, based on a health care decommodification index, identified some similarities with the welfare regime classification of Esping-Andersen. Italy was the only Mediterranean country included in Esping-Andersen’s original analysis and fell into the conservative welfare state regime cluster.
