The welfare state was central in the process of state and nation building. According to Stein Rokkan, the ultimate last task of central political elites in the construction of nation-states was ‘the creation of territorial economic solidarity through measures to equalize benefits and opportunities both across regions and across strata of the population’ (quoted in Flora 1999: 58). T.H. Marshall, the theorist of ‘citizenship’, has also evoked an image of how, over centuries, the functions of government and the rights of citizenship—among which social rights were central—‘accumulated at the scale and within the institutions of the democratic “nation-state”’ (Jeffery 2009: 74). Again, as shown in Jeffrey’s summary of the evolution of ‘national rights’, ‘social citizenship’ was the last type of citizenship to emerge and consolidate in the first half of the twentieth century
1
.
Generally, the development of state welfare enhanced the capacity of central states to intervene in and shape the lives of their citizens. As pointed out by Ferrera (2005a: 168):
This process of centralisation and standardisation encouraged the creation of ‘cross-local alliances of a functional nature’ (Bartolini 2005). Indeed, since the strengthening of central governments made ‘exit options’ increasingly costly for peripheral territorial actors, political requests could be constructed and communicated more effectively through statewide networks of apparatuses and institutions (McEwen and Moreno 2005: 3). The interaction among statewide, cross-territorial organisations representing different interests (parties, employers’ organisations and trade unions) had an important impact on the structure of welfare states. Thus, as underlined by Esping-Andersen (1990), the emergence of different national welfare states depended on the level of political mobilisation of some statewide political or social bodies (social-democratic parties and trade unions), which in turn interacted with other statewide organisations (agrarian and bourgeois parties and employers’ organisations). Territorial issues did not play any role in this game since they were incorporated within each of these vertically integrated organisations. Only in ‘classic’ federal systems characterised by inter-regional competition, such as Canada, the USA and Australia, has territoriality seemed to play a (negative) role in the evolution of welfare systems (Obinger et al. 2005).[W]ith the advent of public compulsory insurance, social rights acquired both a standardized content and an individualized nature, as subjective entitlements to certain forms of public protection—originally and typically cash transfers. The source of such new rights was the nation state, even in those countries which opted for an occupationalist rather than universalist approach.
However, since the mid-1970s European welfare systems have undergone a process of restructuring (which does not just mean ‘retrenchment’). This last phase is characterised not only by the functional fragmentation and ‘privatisation’ of national social protection but also by its increasing ‘territorialisation’. Indeed, in some countries sub-national institutions, and regional governments in particular, have come to play an increasingly central role in the elaboration and implementation of social policies (Ferrera 2005a; McEwen and Moreno 2005; Kazepov 2010). As a result of these transformations, the ‘new politics of welfare’ may be increasingly affected by territorial, region-specific factors rather than ‘statewide’ political dynamics.
In this context, new territorial and regionalist political forces may have become important actors in the elaboration and implementation of social policies. As happened in the process of state building, new social policies promoted at the sub-state level may become an instrument of region building, which further strengthens the saliency of the centre-periphery cleavage. At the same time, the traditional promoters of welfare expansion, centre-left political parties, may have adapted in different ways to processes of decentralisation. Some of them may have seen the increasing importance of the regional arena as an opportunity to invest additional resources in the construction of new systems of social protection that complement the national one. Yet other centre-left parties may have been less inclined to promote the development of region-specific social policies, which may in turn produce increasing territorial fragmentation and inequality in the structure and effectiveness of welfare governance across the national territory.
The general aim of this study is to see to what extent the politics of welfare in decentralised systems is affected by the mobilisation—through regionalist parties—of the centre-periphery cleavage and by regional support for socially progressive political forces, which instead emerged from the mobilisation of the left-right ‘functional’ cleavage (Caramani 2004: 248). The following analysis does not only consider these two aspects of political competition separately but also tries to assess the effects produced by their intersection.
Chapter 2 provides a review of the past and current debates on old and new welfare politics and territoriality. It also presents the main hypotheses of this study focusing on the role played by regionalist and left-wing parties in sub-state welfare building. Finally, it clarifies the case selection criteria and methodologies that are adopted to test the hypothesis.
The core of this study is formed of three sections, each focusing on the territorial politics of welfare in three countries: Italy, Spain and Great Britain. In the case of the first two countries, preliminary quantitative chapters (Chapters 3 and 6) are followed by two more qualitative chapters, which separately assess the effects of territorial and left-wing mobilisations on welfare development (Chapters 4–5 and 7–8, respectively). The section on Great Britain has a different structure. An introductory chapter focuses on the transformations and territorialisation of the British welfare state and presents a general assessment of the different levels of development of regional welfare systems in Scotland, Wales and England (Chapter 9). The two qualitative chapters provide a more in-depth analysis of the processes of welfare building promoted by the newly devolved administrations of Scotland (Chapter 10) and Wales (Chapter 11).
The conclusion (Chapter 12) tries to sum up the main results of this research by combining both cross-regional and cross-country comparisons. Moreover, it considers the possible effects of territorial politics on the welfare systems of other European countries, such as Germany, France and Belgium, which have not been considered in this study. It also tries to assess the more recent developments in regional welfare governance in the post-crisis period (since 2009) in Italy, Spain and Great Britain. Finally, possible developments of this research are discussed.
Note
- 1.Yet it should be underlined that in some countries social rights preceded political rights. The case of Germany, well illustrated by Alber (1986), is emblematic of a welfare system that started to emerge before the process of democratisation. This, however, does not contradict the fact that civil, political and social rights have all played a very important role in the process of nation building.
Bibliography
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