Public Resources Retrenchment and Social Welfare Innovation in Italy: Welfare Cultures and the Subsidiarity Principle in Times of Crisis

Abstract

Since the late 1990s, the main Italian ‘welfare cultures’ and the resulting innovation strategies of the welfare system refer to the question of ‘pluralization’. The current crisis is causing the expansion of the public functions carried out by different private actors. As a consequence, discussions of welfare cultures are increasingly making reference to the notion of horizontal subsidiarity that requires new forms of governance. Three subsidiarity approaches emerge: the liberal subsidiarity approach which is related to the ‘free choice’ welfare model; the incomplete subsidiarity approach related to the ‘second welfare’ strategy; and the radical subsidiarity approach related to the ‘radical plural welfare society’ perspective. The paper develops a theoretical discussion of these different welfare cultures—these latter seen through the point of view of subsidiarity—arguing that the problems arising from an economic understanding of welfare pluralization could be addressed by a cultural change which sees in the definition of a new plural welfare system and role for the public sphere the opportunity for aggregating social demand, reinforcing social ties, creating shared value and re-socializing social risks. The hypothesis is that the ‘radical subsidiarity’ approach could better capture these chances for social innovation that this phase of crisis can unlock.

Keywords::

• subsidiarity
• plural welfare
• welfare cultures
• crisis
• Italy

Notes

¹ This metaphor suggests an act of institutional reconfiguration and re-balancing of the welfare state architecture. It is characterized by a shift of weight and emphasis among the various instruments and objectives of social policy; this recast process should be achieved alongside four sub-dimensions: functional; distributive; normative; and institutional.

² We refer here to the collective constructions of meaning that are embodied in a complex of ideas, values and models of welfare state and its societal functions (Baldock 1999; Pfau-Effinger 2005).

³ We use the term in the sense of Giddens (1994), when he speaks about ‘radicalized modernity’, assuming that (also) due to the crisis, starting from the need to diversify the sources of funding, the pluralization of the welfare system has been pushed to reach to its extreme consequences, revealing its ambivalences, its strengths and weaknesses.

⁴ According to the 2011 Census (Istat), there were more than 302,000 non-profit subjects (+28% compared to 10 years earlier), for a total of 681,000 employees (+39.3% compared to 2001) and 4.8 million volunteers (+43%).

⁵ Here we prefer to use the term ‘strategy’ in place of ‘model’ to emphasize that the configuration of this new model is still under development, and has not yet reached a consolidated structure.

⁶ We use here the term ‘perspective’ instead of ‘model’ to highlight that this just a theoretical and normative proposal and not yet an established policy model.

⁷ The term is here borrowed from Sabel (2013).