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The last twenty years have seen an increasingly important role for territories at sub-national level in many areas of welfare: from the health servvice to the social services, from active labour policies to inclusion. This trend is connected to two macro-factors. The first is internal, and connected to the growing difficulties of central governments in managing welfare policies on the financial and organisational level, particularly now that there are new neo-localist attitudes and movements. The second factor is European integration, which has gradually attenuated the regulatory «safety-belts» around the nation states and supplied incentives and resources that can implement region-building processes, to a large extent based on the territorial differentiation of policies. The outcome of these processes is for the moment still open. On the one hand, re-territorialisation could make welfare more efficient and more effective; on the other hand, it could set off centrifugal dynamics, if not actual «destructuring» of the national welfare systems: a worrying scenario in its social and political consequences.

This article examines the changes in the welfare systems of eight European countries, considering the (implicit and explicit) processes of the territorial reorganisation of welfare policies as a valuable observation point. These processes have involved new territorial configurations and public and private agents in organising and financing various welfare policies. The vertical and horizontal analysis of these changes brings out a notable interaction between these two dimensions that leads to coherent, but specific, outcomes. Indeed, the convergence of trends of rescaling and governance leads to outcomes linked to the characteristics of the national and local welfare models that adapt changes to local conditions.

The article offers a comparative account of the situation of the institutional set-ups for health services adopted in various countries of western Europe. The health service is one of the main fields in which the processes of decentring have been most marked and debated over the years. This study shows how it is not possibile to identify one trend and timing for all western countries. The type of model adopted (insurance-based or a national health service), like belonging to different welfare «families» (the Scandinavian, English, continental or Mediterranean ones), influence the course taken in recent decades by the various public health systems in terms of decentring and, in some cases, of re-centralization.

In the 1990s decentring the national health service was the signal for processes of institutional differentiation between the Regions, from which emerged three models of governance for the health system. In recent years, however, most of the Regions have partially converged on regulatory solutions based on principles of cooperation and integration between the health organisations, pursued through negotiating or centralised planning. This trend is probably a response to the common problem of control of expenditure and financial retrenching, which, in the most critical cases, risks heavily conditioning regional autonomy, setting off process of recentralisation of the health service.

Tax federalism in Italy is closing in on us, while the gap between North and South increases. In the welfare system the gap concerns both essential levels of services as well as the economic-financial situation. Analysing the balance sheets of recent years and some indicators of the state of organisation of the regional health services, we can see how the deficit in many Regions is not due to under-financing so much as to different planning and organisational choices. In the less virtuous Regions there is an extremely close link between deficits and distortions in services, while in the more virtuous Regions the positive balance results are accompanied by indicators that show better organisation and greater appropriateness. This is confirmed by the plans of the six Regions with serious deficits for dealing with the situation. This shows the importance of local governance and at the same time the need, particularly in a federal country, for strong national control to guarantee uniform essential services throughout the country.

In the last thirty years Italy has witnessed a process of the decentring of regulatory and management powers for social policies from the state to the sub-national, and often regional, level. Starting from an analysis of regional welfare is useful, not only for analysing an important dimension of welfare organisation (most health expenditure is managed at this level and much of the resources and control of other social policies is in the hands of the Regions), but also to understand more generally how the regional political and socio-economic systems are changing. More territorialised welfare systems built to a greater extent around the sub-national level of government raise the problem of territorial difference and inequalities, particularly in a country like Italy, where these features are already evident. The article focuses on how different the performance levels are for systems of regional welfare and what might explain them, trying to evaluate the role of dimensions such as political orientation, models of governance, the level of economic development and the more socio-cultural aspects such as social capital.

The article is written from a particular point of view, that of a regional administrator who has also had many years of research experience in Italian universities, studying welfare systems, and offers a reasoned account of some key critical aspects of the creation of social policies at regional level. It thus offers an inside analysis of the regional administrative machine, using the techniques and tools of university research. It illustrates some of the main points involved with making social policy at regional level, connected with intervention models and philosophies, the characteristics of the administrators, and the relation between bureaucracy and policy and between the various levels of government.

This paper discusses the implementation of «tax federalism» in Italy, concentrating on the link that should exist beteen the type of legislative and administrative functions attributed to the decentred bodies, how they are financed, and the plan for equal distribution. Different views are compared concerning citizen solidarity, the autonomy of territorial bodies and investing them with responsibility, and behind these views emerges the redistributive conflict between the North and South of the country. Taking the problems connected with defining and financing essential service levels as an example, the article shows how the principle problems are not connected so much with preparing a delegated law, on which the general guiding principles are often open to different interpretations, as identifying how to implement it effectively.

The article examines one of the components of the projects to implement the federalist reform of the Italian system: the recourse to standard costs as a criterion instead of standard needs and traditional levels of expenditure. Starting from the constatation that, for all the differences in the plans for implementing article 119 of the Constitution, they have been based on the idea of standard costs, the article seeks to bring out the technical, methodological and political complexity of the way the new system has been put into pratice, partly through recourse to experiences - particularly in the health sector - that might provide useful indications. It also draws attention to how much an apparently auxiliary aspect, like standard costs, contributes decisively to defining the type of federalism that will be implemented in the country, and, where welfare policies are concerned, how it might constitute one of the dividing lines between a system that reduces territorial autonomy and one that guarantees it, but incorporating the risks of less control of the already dramatic differences.

This contribution analyses the present state of social regionalism in Italy through the financial dimension, following the profound changes that have overtaken the territorial organisation of responsibilities and functions. What emerges is a picture with a series of persistent features, rooted in certain historical factors that have accompanied the role of the Regions in social policies, but also some signs of change that indicate a desire on the part of the Regions to take the centre of the stage. The combination of these two elements offers possibile opportunities, but also risks that may be connected to the current territorial weighting of social policies towards the Regions.

This essay examines the various phases in the development that has taken place over a decade in regional legislation on the labour market. It begins by considering the organisational and functional modernisation of labour services, a result of the administrative decentralisation of the late 1990s that implemented the so-called Bassanini Reform. But it was the constitutional reform of 2001, giving the Regions legislative power over «protection and safety in the workplace» that was, for some of them at least, the opportunity for rethinking the role of local administrations in overseeing the labour markets in their territory. Not only has there been a rethinking, more or less serious, of the oranisational and managerial model of the 1990s, but the Regions in particular, on the lookout as they are for areas of intervention that tend to be ignored by central government, have started to experiment new ways of encouraging «quality of work».

The article is based on a re-reading of some of the main results of an investigation by Ires (Institute of Economic and Social Research) on some of the characteristics of local systems’ social services for elderly non-self-sufficient persons. While bringing out some good practices to be found in the country both in regulations and in organisation and management, the study - carried out in 100 provincial capitals - confirms how widespread are traditional services for the non-self-sufficient, characterised by poor integrated services and by an imbalance between (most widespread) economic contributions and services. This introduces the complex subject of the relation and integration of «social» and «health» expenditure, which, whatever choice is made, will require the deployment of much greater resources than there have been in the past, although not necessarily starting from scratch. This raises the question of setting up «Funds for the non-self-sufficient» - now more and more often on a regional as well as national basis - understood as a «social» response able to channel and contain the economic effort that is inevitably required by the new challenge.

In Italy the constitutional reform of section V in 2001 attributes legislative responsibility for education and professional training to the Regions/Autonomous Provinces. These territorial institutions passed regulations to create integrated sysytems of training and education that would bear in mind manufacturing requirements and, some more than others, to integrate the various channels of financing. Starting from this scenario, the essay provides an up-to-date account of the regional system of education and professional training in Italy, dwelling in particular on the regional laws and the operative regional plans (Por) Esf 2007-2013 for Emilia-Romagna and Campania which underwrite agreements with the social partners for a complementary use of (national and regional) public and private (joint regional funds) resources for continuous training.

The article examines the emergence of new «spaces of social citizenship» at sub-national level in Italy with reference to welfare policies. In this sector, intermediate levels have traditionally had a major role since the Regions were first set up, and this has gradually extended to the attribution of exclusive responsibility in the matter, thanks to the recent reform of section V of the Constitution. After tracing the historical development of welfare policies in Italy, the article analyses the differences that exist at regional level in terms both of expenditure and of services offered. The essay concludes with some reflections on scenarios and prospects that are opening in our country today for the welfare sector, particularly wth reference to the process of defining essential levels of services.

Regionalism has come back to prominence, as the political, economic, cultural, and social meaning of space changes. In some ways, politics, economics, and public policies are deterritorializing; but at the same time there is a reterritorialization. The «new regionalism» is the product of this decomposition and recomposition of the territorial frame-work of public life, consequent on changes in the state, the market, and the international context. Functional needs, institutional restructuring, and political mobilization all play a role. Regionalism must now be placed in the context of the international market and the European Union, as well as the nation-state.

Following decentralization processes, many Italian Regions have been acting as policy laboratories, developing very different approaches according to their political attitude. On the one hand this gives rise to a scenario of fragmented policies and growing inequalities in the Italian welfare system. On the other hand, opportunities are opening for trying new institutional and organizational structures at regional level. In this article we focus on a pilot programme which aims to promote and implement innovative practices in health and social care services in Friuli Venezia Giulia. On the basis of this case study, we offer an analytical overview of some issues involving the development of «local active welfare» in Italy.

The text illustrates the profile and aims of a permanent study group that grew out of research on local welfare at the Department of innovation and society (Dies) of the University of Rome Sapienza. The study group, coordinated by Massimo Paci, is made up of teachers, researchers, research students and un-dergraduates from inside and outside the Faculty. The document underlines the planned direction of the group’s analyses and reflections, aimed at contributing to developing a specific viewpoint to interpret the ongoing change in social and training policies following the trend to greater citizen equality and empowerment within a democratic and partipatory democratic welfare.