Selective Neoliberalism: How Italy Went from Dualization to Liberalisation in Labour Market and Pension Reforms

ABSTRACT

The paper investigates the Italian institutional adaptation to Neoliberalism and contributes to the literature in two ways. First, we analyse Italian and international political economy developments since the late 1960s, employing a historical institutionalist approach, sequencing the shift from the ‘roll back’ of Fordism to the ‘roll out’ of neoliberalism. In doing so, we connect the long-standing relevance and re-emergence of neoliberal ideas among technocratic elites and major political parties to the progressive building up of a neoliberal turn in 1992. Second, we develop the notion of selective neoliberalism, defined as a modality of institutional adaptation to neoliberalism which starts from the margins after the 1992 critical juncture, hitting first weak social groups through a dualization process, and then expanding to the rest of society in the form of liberalisation. We illustrate how successive governments circumvented the resistance of trade unions and completed the process of neoliberal adaptation over time, through an analysis of labour market and pension reform processes. The notion of selective neoliberalism might be applied to other countries and policy domains, in particular where an incremental reform process undermines step-by-step the resistance of different veto players to neoliberalization.

KEYWORDS:

• Dualization
• Liberalisation
• Neoliberalism
• Historical Institutionalism
• Labour Market
• Pension
• Social Policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A process defined as ‘dualization’ (see Emmenegger et al. 2012) or ‘reforms at the margins’ (see Berton et al. 2012).

2 Other forms of institutional adaptation to neoliberalism have taken place in different domains, e.g. the health care (Grisolia and Ferragina 2015) and university system (Viesti 2016, Scacchi et al. 2017).

3 There were no unemployment benefits for atypical workers until 2012 (and the revisions in 2015 and 2019) (see Table 1, Reforms 24, 27 and 29).

4 The 1950s and 1960s comprised the golden era of organised business (Locke 1995). The ‘Italian miracle’ in the post-war period was a by-product of wage compression and high GDP growth.

5 The Autunno Caldo signed a change in industrial relations, with the unification of blue- and white-collar workers’ struggles, the abatement of wage differences between the North and the South and between skilled and unskilled workers, the improvement of health and safety conditions, and the reduction of the working time (Baccaro and Pulignano 2011).

6 Which led to the first experiment of neoliberalism (Valdés 1995).

7 With reference also to internal political developments such as the affare De Lorenzo in 1964, the golpe Borghese in 1970, and the strategia della tensione (Ginsborg 1990).

8 The PCI and the CGIL played an important role in the contrast of the Red Brigades (Palaia 2019).

9 The oldest and largest Italian trade union linked to the PCI.

10 Minister of Finance between 1982 and 1983 and responsible for economic policy within the PSI. As an academic he supported ordoliberalism and worked with prominent scholars like Buchanan (Buchanan and Forte 1964; Forte and Buchanan 1961).

11 The politics of wage compression began with the Eur-line in 1978 and continued through various tripartite agreements after the abrogation of Scala Mobile (Table 1, Reforms 8, 10, 13, 16, see also Meardi 2006). These agreements reinforced the competitive austerity game logic described previously.

12 Italy employed also for long time forms of competitive devaluation (Fratianni and Spinelli 1997). The process of European monetary integration has contributed to limit and then eliminate this practice.

13 Although a limited use of part-time contracts was allowed since 1984 (Table 1, Reform 3).

14 The Decreto Dignità reintroduced the 12-month limit for the use of ‘a-casual’ fixed-term contract (Table 1, Reform 28).

15 The Riforma Fornero extended the contributory system to all workers (Table 1, Reform 23).

16 This reform project was inspired by Antonio Martino, the only Italian president of the Mont Pelerin Society between 1988 and 1990 (Mirowski and Plehwe 2009, p. 18).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a public grant overseen by the French National Research Agency (ANR) as part of the ‘Investissements d'Avenir’ program LIEPP (reference: ANR-11-LABX-0091, ANR-11-IDEX-0005-02).

Notes on contributors

Emanuele Ferragina

Emanuele Ferragina is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Sciences Po Paris. Prior to Sciences Po, he was a Departmental Lecturer at the University of Oxford where he also received his DPhil. Emanuele is interested in the political economy of the welfare state, family policy and social capital. Besides academia, he is a columnist for the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano.

Alessandro Arrigoni

Alessandro Arrigoni is an independent researcher. He holds a PhD in European & International Studies from the King's College London. He has also been researcher in the Department of Social Policy & Intervention at University of Oxford.