"Eppur si Muoveva" : the Italian Trajectory of Recent Welfare Reforms : from 'Rescued by Europe' to Euro-Skepticism

The Italian welfare state is generally classified as either an example of the continental or Bismarckian welfare regime (Esping-Andersen, 1990) or, adopting other conceptual lenses, a representative of the Southern European welfare state family (Ferrera, 1996). Since the \u201cgolden decades\u201d of welfare state expansion (roughly 1950s\u201370s), the Italian welfare state configuration has been characterized by the predominance of the male breadwinner model, a deep gap between the \u201cinsiders\u201d \u2013 mainly workers in core economic sectors and pensioners \u2014 and the \u201coutsiders\u201d \u2014 the unemployed, mostly women and young people \u2014 and by the crucial role of the family in providing informal social protection for its members (Saraceno, 1994). However, during the 1990s and early 2000s the Italian welfare state underwent an unprecedented process of reform. The interventions adopted in the fields of employment policy, pension policy and the social assistance sector were crucial components in this process aimed at \u201cmodernizing\u201d\u2014 or \u201crecalibrating\u201d \ue0 la Ferrera and Hemerijck (2003) \u2014 the Italian welfare state