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Among European countries, particularly those of Southern Europe, Italy is unanimously considered as a case in point and problematic at the same time. Italy, from its origins onwards, has embarked on the path of early social protection and occupationalism. This imprinting has greatly influenced the development of the welfare state and has proved its importance in various critical junctures. During the Seventies, Italian welfare has moved in the health sector from occupationalism along the groove of universalism with the establishment of a National Health Service. At the same time, many obstacles have prevented Italy to align to the main European countries with respect to the overall provision of protection and the capability of facing problems and challenges. Also, reforms introduced and implemented in the Nineties failed to heal completely. Given this context, the article aims at providing a reconstruction of the evolution of the Italian welfare state from its origins to the present day, illustrating the challenges, and evaluating the solutions gradually implemented. Adapted from the source document.

This is a multiauthorial review essay of Daniel Ziblatt's Structuring the State: The Formation of Italy and Germany and the Puzzle of Federalism (Princeton: Princeton U Press, 2006) that includes a rebuttal by Ziblatt. Maurizio Cotta notes the persuasiveness & convincibility of the factors singled out by Ziblatt in support of the book's central thesis that the unification of Italy & Prussian Germany in the second half of the 19th century, although begun in both countries with similar regional institutions, ended with a centrist government in the former & a federalist regime in the latter. He questions, however, his attempt to project these factors in developing a more comprehensive theory of the emergence of major nation states in Western Europe, pointing out that the generalization that gives a satisfactory account for Germany & Italy becomes a fallacy when extended to Belgium or the Netherlands. Alfio Mastropaolo objects Ziblatt's implicit premise that federalism is superior to a centrist-unitarian governance & the implied conclusion that Italy would have fared better with a federalist government after its unification. He observes that neither Germany was spared from Nazism by federalism & nor Italy from Fascism by centralism. Mastropaolo points out that Ziblatt overlooks the importance of ideological factors, in particular the strong sentiments favoring a unitarian state in pre-1861 Italy. Gianfranco Poggi notes that the book fails to consider some important cultural & ideological theories of federalism that suggest an alternative explanation of the preference for federalism in Germany but not Italy. In his rebuttal, Ziblatt replies to the objections raised by each interviewer, defending the descriptive-explanatory efficacy of the historical-comparative approach adopted in the book & Charles Ragin's (1987) qualitative-comparative analysis applied in the extension of the generalization to other European states. He flatly rejects Mastropaolo's imputation that the book favors federalism as a superior form of government. Ziblatt also provides a rationale to justify the relevance of comparing the unification experience of Italy & Prussian Germany for contemporary political science. Z. Dubiel

Tries to identify some common traits of the welfare states of Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece, with special attention to institutional and political aspects. Summary in English p. 202.