Nordic welfare in post-war Italy

Abstract

The present article deals with some of the main issues concerning the perception of the Nordic welfare state in Italy. First the article describes how and why socialist and communist leftists oppose the Nordic model. Then it shows how, around 1980, more factually informed and less ideologically biased descriptions changed this picture. In this positive evolution, more critical views focusing on (albeit mild) Nordic eugenic practices are also taken into account. Finally, the article focuses on the new image of the Nordic model as modernized welfare states (Schumpeterian states, as some scholars define them) effectively coping with enhanced globalized competition and therefore chosen as the benchmark of EU welfare reform. The concluding remarks also deal with the contradictions and setbacks of this ‘Europeanization’ of the Italian welfare debate.

Keywords:

• Welfare state
• Scandinavia
• Nordic models
• Italy
• left
• European social model

Notes

1. As Jesper Due, one of the main Danish experts in this field, puts it: ‘A considerable part of the Danish model rests on the fact that conflict can be used in the event of strikes and lockouts. Conflict is not an end in and of itself, but rather a means that can be used to put pressure on one’s counterpart in a bargaining situation. This is why, over the years, a heritage has been accumulated that is an integral part of the union device in the event of conflict’ (Birkedal Christensen 2009). As for Sweden, the most conflictual country in Europe since the 1930s, we can see an evolution wherein only in the 1960s did it reach a low rate of conflict: in the 1950s there were 1.5 million workdays with conflict; in the 1960s, 500,000 days; in the 1970s, 1.7 million; in 1980, 4.5 million; in 1981, 2.7 million (Nycander 2002, 287 and 309).

2. Art. 4 1° co. ‘The Republic acknowledges citizens’ right to work and to foster the conditions to exercise this right’. Art. 35 of the Italian constitution states also: “the Republic protects labour in all its forms and applications. It sees to the training and professional progress of workers.”

3. Paci’s comment to Esping-Andersen, and especially his theoretical reference to Korpi, was to become even more evolved and convincing in that it pointed out that the 1978 healthcare reform was not merely the result of a different post-1976 political-coalitional balance, but of a long social and political change, wherein, from Health Care Minister Mariotti’s hospital reform (1968) to Labour Minister Brodolini’s convincing of Rumor in the second phase of the centre-left (1969), previous political decision-makers had been successful at connecting with the growing strength of the worker movement.

4. These are largely ideas expressed by Gunnar Myrdal around 1939, and come from Strang 2010, 104 and 106–107. I address these geostrategic topics in Borioni (2005) and Borioni and Christiansen (2015).

5. My description of this debate is based in particular on the words and work of Bo Stråth.