In issue 3-08 RPS returns to the subject of local welfare, the local territory being seen as an administrative dimension. The aim is to provide information on some of the most interesting or recurrent topics in the current debate on the socio-institutional reforms. only subscribers can see the full article

Tax federalism in Italy is around the corner, while the gap between North and South increases. In the health and welfare system the gap concerns both essential service levels and the economic-financial situation. Analysing the running costs in the last few 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 connection between deficits and distortions in the supply of seronly subscribers can see the full article

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.only subscribers can see the full article