Party Systems and Social Policy: A Historical Comparison of Italy and Germany

Abstract

The article shows how the development of social policy in Italy and Germany was influenced by their respective party systems. Its focus is on the differences between systems of unemployment protection in the two countries after World War II. Due to many similarities between the two states, in particular the dominant presence of Christian democratic parties in both national governments at the time, this divergence cannot be adequately explained by standard theories. The article shows that it is crucial to take the widely different party systems into account: seven parties and ideological polarisation in Italy as opposed to three parties and moderate ideological differences in Germany. These generated different political dynamics and, consequently, different policy output.

Acknowledgements

This article took a long time to evolve. I thank everyone who provided helpful comments – in the final phase, in particular, the two anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. Sartori counts only those parties as relevant that either play a role in the formation of government or constitute such a forceful opposition as to affect the direction of competition, i.e. by attracting voters and causing other parties to react (Sartori 1976: 122–3).

2. In fact, Sartori (1976) goes beyond Downs (1957) by arguing that political parties are likely to influence the voter distribution.

3. Families are important providers of welfare in Italy but less so in Germany. Observers sometimes suggest that this explains lower levels of public provision in Italy. However, family welfare is mainly a functional equivalent to public provision. In itself it does not prevent the introduction of new public benefits. It is more likely that public benefits determine the extent of family-provided welfare (see Lynch 2006: 48).

4. Note that Lehmbruch (2000) uses ‘polarisation’ differently, namely in the sense of competition concentrating on two poles independently of their ideological distance.

5. Minutes of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, 3 August 1954.

6. ‘Endspurt in Bonn’, Die Zeit, 12 May 1961.

7. Cited in ‘Die armen Schweine und die anderen’, Der Spiegel, 14 October 1974.

8. ‘Il Programma del PCI’, L’Unità, 8 May 1946. Party manifestos were made available electronically through a joint service by Zentralarchiv für Empirische Sozialforschung (ZA), Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU), and Party Manifestos Project.

9. ‘Il PSI agli elettori’ (PSI manifesto for the parliamentary election 1953).

10. Lynch (2006) argues that the PCI was kept from advocating more universal policies because of the DC’s clientelism. However, the radical left did not have a strong preference for unemployment benefits in the first place.