The Puzzle of Expansionary Welfare Reforms under Harsh Austerity: Explaining the Italian Case

ABSTRACT

Although austerity carried the day in crisis-ridden Southern Europe, expansionary welfare measures also emerged alongside retrenchment in countries where left-leaning coalitions were in government and anti-establishment parties on the rise. By focusing on the case of Italy (2013–2018), this article investigates the political dynamics that favoured expansionary welfare measures under austerity. We triangulate qualitative and quantitative evidence and show that, constrained by EU conditionality abroad, the reform agenda of the Italian centre-left first sought the support of middle- and upper-class constituencies at home. However, the deteriorating social situation, the divide that emerged within the centre-left under the leadership of Matteo Renzi, and the rise of the pro-welfare Five Star Movement reshuffled the social policy priorities of the centre-left.

KEYWORDS:

• Renzi government
• social democratic parties
• labour market liberalisation
• external constraints
• anti-establishment parties
• politics of constrained choice

Acknowledgments

Previous versions of this article were presented at the 2016 Italian Political Science Annual Conference, the 2017 CES Conference, the 2017 ECPR Conference and 2017 ESPAnet and ESPAnet Italia Conferences. We thank all the discussants, the editors of SESP and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. By contrast, anti-establishment parties were included in government coalitions in Greece with Syriza and in Portugal with the Left Bloc. In Italy, the M5S formed a government coalition only after the 2018 national election, together with the far-right Lega (League).

2. It should be noted that middle-class sizes differ widely. They are larger in EU core countries (around 53 per cent of the adult population) and smaller in Italy and in the rest of the South European member states (36 and 35 per cent on average over the years considered, respectively).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patrik Vesan

Patrik Vesan is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Aosta Valley (Italy). His main areas of research are European and comparative employment and social policies, European governance, public administration and policy analysis, Italian politics and local development policy.

Stefano Ronchi

Stefano Ronchi is a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute (Fiesole). His research interests include comparative welfare state analysis, labour market policies and the politics of social policy, addressed with both quantitative and qualitative methods. His works have been published in the Journal of Social policy and International Political Science Review.