Reforming the Italian and Spanish Welfare States during the Crisis: What Politics behind Policies?

This paper analyzes reform trajectories within the Italian and Spanish welfare states and the transformation of the policy-making process since the onset of the crisis to present. The paper opens with an introduction and the analytical framework, which constitute the first and second sections respectively. Despite the fact that trajectories of social protection reform and institutional settings in both countries significantly differed prior to the crisis, the similarities between the reforms adopted henceforth are very pronounced. Moreover, the political systems of the cases under study as well as the causes of the crisis in both countries also show marked differences. Hence, the research question is why, then, the reform paths show a high degree of similarity during the crisis itself. Such similarity may not be explained only by EU conditionality/intrusiveness, which has narrowed but not crowded out the room for maneuver of governments. Our hypothesis is that such similarities may be interpreted at the light of much more complex transformations of the decision-making process. The third section offers an assessment of similarities and differences in the trajectories of change observed in the main social policy fields. The fourth section analyzes changes in the policy-making process in terms of the roles, power and influence of some of the main actors (e.g. central governments, sub-national governments, the social partners, the EU, etc.). Furthermore, new policy framings and interaction dynamics have been developed while others were discontinued.