Since the 1990s, Italian regions have been granted significant policy making and spending autonomy in the fields of health and social care. This has resulted in increasing cross-regional variation in welfare generosity rather than in a...
moreSince the 1990s, Italian regions have been granted significant policy making and spending autonomy in the fields of health and social care. This has resulted in increasing cross-regional variation in welfare generosity rather than in a ‘race to the bottom’. By drawing on an original dataset of spending figures in 21 Italian regions from 1996 until 2012, this paper aims to show that the strength of territorially-focused, regionalist parties has had a positive and significant effect on welfare generosity and activism in Italian regions and that such positive effect has become even stronger after the beginning of the economic crisis. This means that in multi-level settings, the so-called ‘centre-periphery’ may explain a significant part of cross-regional variation in the development of social policies. Indeed, the argument of this study is that regionalist parties will tend to invest more resources in region-specific welfare systems as part of a broader project of ‘region-building’ and strengthening of sub-state solidarities. Generally, in a context of decreasing social intervention of the central government, regionalist parties may transform sub-national institutions into new arenas of welfare expansion. On the other hand, the effect of traditional left-right politics may be less relevant than expected by mainstream welfare literature focusing on state-wide social policies. Indeed, contrary to what hypothesized by ‘power resource theories’, Italian regions in which centre-left parties are stronger do not seem to be characterized by more generous welfare systems.