The paper examines the relationship between the severe economic crisis facing Greece and the country’s social protection system, arguing that this relationship is ambivalent. On one level, the welfare state itself has contributed in a far from trivial way to the fiscal crisis of the state, with its various failures including huge deficits in key programmes such as pensions and health. On a second level, the crisis and the measures to counter it deprive the welfare state of resources, while at the same time setting in motion sweeping changes. On a third level, social protection can help cope with the consequences of the crisis, but enhancing its capacity to do so will require considerable reconfiguration and proper funding of social safety nets. The paper concludes by discussing the prospects for a revival of welfare state building in Greece in the current harsh climate.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0958928711418858

The welfare state and the crisis: the case of Greece

Complying with Europe - EU Harmonisation and Soft Law in the Member States

Introduction 1. The welfare state in East Central Europe: a conceptual and theoretical reconsideration 2. Institutional legacies: state-building, regime change, and the development of national welfare states in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, 1919-1989 3. Policy legacies of state socialism: cycles of social policy expansion and retrenchment in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, 1945-1989 4. Historical legacies, welfare state institutions and the politics of social policy reforms in postcommunist East Central Europe Conclusion.

Welfare States in East Central Europe, 1919–2004: Historical Legacies, Welfare State Institutions, and the Politics of Social Policy Reforms in Postcommunist East Central Europe, 1989–2004

The current Greek crisis started off in 2009 as a fiscal crisis, soon turned into a sovereign debt crisis, then mutated into a full-blown recession, unprecedented in depth and duration. The article...

Social policy in hard times: The case of Greece:

/pdf/the-family-in-the-mediterranean-welfare-states-clre5lqc1c.pdf

The Family in the Mediterranean Welfare States

The article is focused on the analysis of flexicurity arrangements in the Italian case with a twofold aim. The first aim is substantive: analysing and evaluating recent labour market reforms in Italy with particular reference to the possible emergence of a new flexicurity model. The second goal is to contribute to the debate on labour market development and flexicurity by enriching and refining the available analytical tools. More specifically, we argue that the traditional conceptual ‘lenses’ focusing on the ‘insiders’/‘outsiders’ divide are inadequate to grasp the ongoing changes in the Italian labour market. This leads us to identify a third category of workers, the ‘mid-siders’, who are increasingly relevant in the Italian case and may prove to be relevant in other labour markets too. Moreover, we introduce the concept of ‘selective flexicurity’, referring to the fact that in the Italian case flexibility and security measures have been applied differently across the various categories of workers.

‘Selective Flexicurity’ in Segmented Labour Markets : the Case of Italian ‘Mid-Siders’

Italy and Poland present similarly weak minimum income protection models, yet this results from two different policy trajectories in the last 15 years: both countries actually introduced a minimum income scheme (MIS) between the late 1990s (Italy) and the early 2000s (Poland), but later developments were characterized by policy reversal in the Italian case vis-a-vis institutionalization in Poland. The paper therefore addresses two intertwined puzzles. First, in the light of very different background conditions, which factors help understand the convergent process towards the introduction of MIS? Second, what explains remarkable divergence in the subsequent phase? Challenging previous claims about the limited scope of political competition dynamics in the field of social assistance, due to generally narrow constituencies and limited political mobilization, we contend that political competition dynamics are key factors in order to make sense of both convergent and divergent trajectories in the two diverse p...

Understanding convergence and divergence: old and new cleavages in the politics of minimum income schemes in Italy and Poland

Le politiche di assistenza sociale

Madama I. Beyond continuity? Italian social assistance policies between institutional opportunities and agency



The article addresses recent developments of social assistance policies in Italy with two interpretative aims. The first regards the approval of the long-awaited framework law in 2000 and deals with the factors that made a path-shifting national reform possible in a policy sector which had evolved through successive accretions and gradual revisions. The second regards the effectiveness of the reform, providing an assessment of the (scant) achievements subsequent to its adoption. The reform process was investigated through a model that combines factors of historical neo-institutionalist derivation and agency dynamics, the latter of which is intended to overcome the structuralist bias of purely neo-institutionalist explanations. The article draws two conclusions. The first concerns the resilience of Italy's backwardness in this policy field. The second, a theoretical consideration, is that if institutions function as constraint generators as well as opportunity generators for actors, agency dynamics are crucial in order to fully understand the timing and specific contents of institutional change.

I. Madama

Papers

‘Selective Flexicurity’ in Segmented Labour Markets : the Case of Italian ‘Mid-Siders’

Understanding convergence and divergence: old and new cleavages in the politics of minimum income schemes in Italy and Poland

Le politiche di assistenza sociale

Beyond continuity? Italian social assistance policies between institutional opportunities and agency

Fighting Poverty and Social Exclusion in the EU : A Chance in Europe 2020