From the Southern to the Northern Question: Territorial and Social Politics in Italy

The chapter discusses the long-term development of Italian social policy in a comparative perspective, and argues that Italy deviates from the path which continental and Northern European countries followed. In the latter countries a widespread sense of national belonging facilitated the introduction of social protection entitlements, which in turn reinforced the polity’s boundaries, and inter-personal bonds within it. By contrast, the weakness of Italian national identity and civic culture spurred what March and Olson (1993) define as aggregative politics: an outcome which stands at odds with any integrative strategy aimed at strengthening the common bases of citizenship. The chapter provides evidence to support the hypothesis by placing special emphasis on the territorial dimension, and assesses in particular the extent to which the distribution of social policy benefits mirrors a territorial pattern. The analysis of pension as well as health and social care expenditure documents how post-war welfare state developments exacerbated the North-South divide, to the point that one can fruitfully refer to a ‘geography’ of social citizenship when attempting to describe the Italian case. The last part of the chapter addresses the political turmoil of the 1990s and its impact on the welfare state. Having struggled for over a hundred years with the ‘southern question’ ( without being able to solve it), in the early 1990s Italy had to come to terms with a far more challenging ‘northern question’. By placing recent events against the backdrop of long-term trends, the essay leaves little room for an optimistic scenario.