Abstract
This chapter makes a comparative analysis of the trajectories of welfare change in Italy and Spain since the outbreak of the financial crisis. We look at the differences in the types of institutional design to study welfare reform in these two countries and assess how recent changes have affected welfare state institutions. This chapter also assesses the level of the European Union (EU) involvement through formal instruments around the European Semester as well as by the means of agreements with the Troika and the European Central Bank (ECB). For this part of the analysis, three sets of documents have been used: Commission Recommendations and Council Decisions in relation to Excessive Deficit Procedures (EDP); Commission country-specific Recommendations based on Stability or Convergence Programmes, and Policy Measures to boost growth and jobs (National Reform Programmes). These documents allow an analysis of the contents of formal adjustment pressures. Other documents and sources (including newspaper articles) have also been analysed to look at the role of conditionality and ‘backroom’ diplomacy.
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Notes
- 1.
The interpretation of welfare policy changes based on retrenchment has been deeply criticized by Pierson (2001). Analyzing British and US social spending trends, Pierson found that it not only did not decline but rather grew at a faster rate than the economy as a whole. Thereafter welfare state resilience has become a relevant but also a contested concept.
- 2.
Berlusconi’s weak position was the result of an increasing loss of legitimacy in the domestic arena due to scandals and the difficulties with his main ally in government, the Northern League, which was against a pension’s reform (de la Porte and Natali 2014).
- 3.
In the two European Council meetings and in the summit of the heads of state and government of the Eurozone in autumn 2011, the EU institutions and various governments (especially the French and German) insistently asked Italy to make further efforts in implementing structural reforms, expressing at the same time skepticism over Berlusconi’s capacity to deliver them.
- 4.
The data on public opinion were retrieved from the ‘Eurobarometer interactive search system’ on the European Commission web site (http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/index_en.htm).
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Pavolini, E., León, M., Guillén, A.M., Ascoli, U. (2016). From Austerity to Permanent Strain? The European Union and Welfare State Reform in Italy and Spain. In: De La Porte, C., Heins, E. (eds) The Sovereign Debt Crisis, the EU and Welfare State Reform. Work and Welfare in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58179-2_6
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