Fra politiche e istituzioni

Area 14 – Scienze politiche e sociali

The aim of this work is to better understand the new scenarios that are emerging from crises in the traditional models of welfare, and which are set against a background in which such models are constrained to face challenges that are both exogenous and endogenous. The argument proposed herein reconstructs the principal debates that, starting in the nineties, have appeared in the academic literature on the welfare state, and takes as its starting point the identification of the characteristics typical of traditional welfare models. The analysis then developed concentrates on the importance of the macro institutional structures of each welfare model, since the basic hypothesis of this work is that it is the institutional architecture that has a major influence in the ongoing changes. This mutation in welfare models is investigated with particular attention to the implications connected with the process of European integration, and the analysis of this process brings to light how the general redefinition of the role of the public actor indicated by the passage from welfare state to welfare mix favours a process of convergence in the European welfare models. However, while it is true that the consolidation of welfare mix reflects a general tendency, it is also true that the institutional structures of each country create obstacles to a convergence towards a single model, highlighting the influence of path dependency on the process of welfare restructuring.Chiara Agostini è dottoranda in Sistemi sociali, organizzazione e analisi delle politiche pubbliche presso il Dipartimento Innovazione e società (DieS) dell'Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”.

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