Understanding Limitations on Welfare Policy Innovation: The Case of National Guaranteed Minimum Income All Italiana
Published:
Jul 10, 2017
Keywords:
guaranteed minimum income Italy actor-centred approach
Abstract
At the beginning of 2016, Italy remained one of the very few Eurozone countries without a national-level Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI), arguably a major lacuna in the armoury of the welfare state at a time of severe crisis and significant public spending cuts. Drawing on personal communications, parliamentary archives and secondary sources, an actor-centred approach emphasizing the role of domestic actors such as parties, trade unions and religious organizations is utilized to discuss the chronicle of the Italian GMI experience; especially the experimental national GMI in the late 1990s and the early 2000s.
The experiment met with an early demise due to a meagre support base, in conjunction with the dominance of northern interests at the ministry responsible for the design and implementation of a scheme that mainly benefited the poorer south. A policy targeting ‘outsiders’ and introduced without broad consensus among key policy actors is unlikely to be durable. The recent economic crisis has revived the debate, as old and new policy actors express support for national-level GMI.
Article Details
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Lalioti, V. (2017). Understanding Limitations on Welfare Policy Innovation: The Case of National Guaranteed Minimum Income All Italiana. Social Policy, 6, 67–84. https://doi.org/10.12681/sp.10881
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- Vol. 6 (2016)
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