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This paper links patterns of deregulatory reforms and post-crisis reversals in Italy and Portugal with the electoral constituencies of political parties. Combining insights from the social coalitions and electoral behaviour debates, we link reform outcomes to the class setup of the electorate in the two countries by using the class schema developed...
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... us first take a more detailed look at the class composition of party electorates in Italy ( Table 3). As mentioned above, the two largest constituencies in the electorate are production workers and small business owners, the former representing the largest constituency of the PD and the M5S, and the latter constituting the largest social constituency of FI and the radical right (Lega, AN and FdI). ...Context 2
... electoral manifesto of the Lega centred on four main promises: a crackdown on illegal immigration, the introduction of a flat tax regime favourable to small businesses, a more lenient attitude to tax evasion, and the repeal of the pension reform implemented by the Monti government (Lega 2018). Table 3. about here ...Citations
... This is not an entirely new phenomenon in Italy, political shake-ups have been happening frequently during the 1990s, too(Afonso & Bulfone, 2019). ...
Context: After the Eurozone crisis unfolded a decade ago, comparative political economy has investigated reforms of public administration, labour market, welfare state and economic policy particularly in Southern European nations which were hit hardest by the crisis. However, analyses of skill formation reform, particularly vocational education and training (VET), have been scant, despite a common problem pressure for reforms emanating from stubbornly high rates of youth unemployment and similar legacies of statist VET. Approach: We investigate VET reforms brought underway in Greece and Italy during and in the aftermath of the crisis, asking how far apprenticeship-like forms of learning within their VET systems were strengthened. Empirically, we base our analysis on primary and secondary sources, having conducted semi-structured expert interviews in Greece and Italy in 2019. Results: We find that both countries attempted to strengthen the role of apprenticeship and work-based learning, but that politics differed across the two cases in the context of the Eurozone crisis. While in Italy, reforms were 'internalised' and shaped by domestic politics, Greek reforms were largely driven exogenously by the negotiations with the Troika. Conclusion: Although Italy and Greece have undertaken reforms to reduce the dominance of the state in VET provision by expanding apprenticeships and work-based learning, these do not amount to large scale changes to the dominant logic of school-based VET provision. In order to boost their potential in terms of practical learning both countries would need to continue on their reform pathways.
... The protective role that the Portuguese government has historically played with regard to collective bargaining is, in this case, what endows the model with a certain degree of stability and explains the partial return to the pre-2011 situation. This protective role has traditionally been shaped by the confrontation of two distinct socio-economic coalitions, with strong partisan ties (Afonso and Bulfone, 2019). On the one hand, the socio-economic coalition that has ruled the country since the end of the dictatorship in 1974, built around two centrist parties; the Socialist Party (PS), with a social democratic tradition, and the liberal-conservative Social Democratic Party (PSD). ...
... For the first time in Portugal's history, and due to the accumulated social disaffection, the PS agreed to govern with left-wing parties who had traditionally been excluded from power. Antonio Costa's victory gave rise to the formation of a PS-led government with the external support of the PCP and the Bloco de Esquerda (radical left), based on the proposal to end fiscal austerity and reverse some of the reforms implemented in previous years (Afonso and Bulfone, 2019). ...
Over the last decade southern European labour markets have been transformed in a common neoliberal direction, as a consequence of the reforms enacted after the 2008 financial crisis. In our research we investigate to what extent these labour market reforms, aimed at promoting a radical decentralisation of collective bargaining, have actually led to such change. For that purpose, we developed a comparative study of Spain and Portugal, using the notions of path dependency and socio-political coalitions developed by historical institutionalism. Our study leads to the conclusion that institutional trajectories resulting from these labour market reforms merge profound changes with significant resilience. The neoliberal transformations of southern European labour markets have not led to the emergence of new bargaining models, nor to an institutional convergence towards the decentralised collective bargaining systems of liberal market economies. Rather, these reforms have triggered a disorganised fragmentation of collective bargaining systems, resulting in a lack of institutional coherence.
... The results of the 2018 parliamentary elections laid bare the 'narrowness' of the social alliance supporting the post-2011 governments. While the M5S and the League obtained greater-thanaverage vote shares among the working class and the unemployed, the PD gathered high levels of support among upper classes (see Afonso and Bulfone, 2019;Bulfone and Tassinari, 2021). The dismal performance of the PD (the worst in the party's history) exposed the deep crisis of legitimation of the 'neoliberal-progressive Europeanism' associated in Italy with centre-left political forces (Cozzolino, 2021: 140-141). ...
Over the last decade, the succession of financial crisis, neoliberal reform processes, and emergence of anti-establishment and far-right political forces has become a familiar pattern across Europe. But in few countries has it been as striking as in Italy. After the 2018 national elections, the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement (M5S) and the far-right League joined forces to form a government characterised by its rejection of past neoliberalising reforms and by its defiant stance towards European Union fiscal rules. The League’s victory in the latest European elections confirmed its ascendance and its centrality in the Italian political landscape. This article examines these developments in light of the recent trajectory of the Italian political economy and investigates whether the rise of these parties, and particularly the League, marked a break with the post-2011 neoliberalisation process. Analysis of the M5S-League government’s action indicates that these forces can further neoliberalisation processes together with a mix of anti-migration and welfare chauvinist measures. Moreover, an investigation of the political-economic project of the League shows that far-right parties can advance ‘nation-based’ neoliberalisation processes.
... This paved the way for the Socialist Party (PS), which had campaigned on the promise to 'turn the page on austerity'. Bolstered by the support of two radical left parties, the PS attempted to use its time in office to win back traditional constituencies through the (partial) reversal of the previous labour market reforms (Afonso and Bulfone, 2019;Bulfone and Tassinari, 2020). Unsurprisingly, this coalition met the suspicion of Northern governments and EU officials, whose fears about a complete reversal of the economic adjustments of 2011-14 informed the direction of Semester CSRs from 2014 onwards. ...
Macro-economic policy coordination remains a challenge in the EU. The European Semester was designed to help facilitate more coordination. In the area of wage policies, it encourages Germany and the Netherlands to support stronger wage growth, while Italy and Portugal have been told to exercise wage restraint. This paper analyses how domestic interest group politics influence how EU recommendations are received. Reflecting on the different growth models that underpin these four countries, we find that country-specific recommendations meet country-specific obstacles – independent of whether recommendations aim at increasing or reducing wages. Specifically, we observe that domestic actors successfully mobilize against EU recommendations that go against the interests of their constituencies, but are less effective in mobilizing for recommendations aligning with their interests. Hence, we submit that high salience of EU influence poses an obstacle for EU-induced reform in the South while low salience limits EU influence in the North.
... They note that 'Once the knife of conditionality is no longer at a government's throat, governments will increase public sector spending to appease powerful domestic constituents' (Rickard and Caraway, 2019, p. 18). Similarly, Afonso and Bulfone (2019) show that political parties' proposals for reversals are linked to the interests of their constituencies. ...
... 68 Despite the existing, albeit less stringent, constraints, and in line with our theoretical expectations, the government reversed some structural reforms and budget cuts as soon as Portugal exited the programme. Notably, the representativeness criterion to extend sectoral agreements was partially reversed by the Passos Coelho government, after both employers and trade unions opposed the new law (Afonso and Bulfone, 2019). The government also reversed the 20 per cent cuts in civil servant salaries. ...
In the last decade, five Eurozone governments in economic difficulty received assistance from international lenders on condition that certain policies specified in the Memoranda of Understanding were implemented. What room of manoeuvre did the governments of these countries have? After conditionality, to what extent were governments willing and able to roll back changes imposed on them by the international lenders? Do we find variation across governments, and if so, why? This book addresses those questions, analyzing the constraints on national executives in the five bailed out countries of the Eurozone during and beyond the crisis (2008-2019). We show that, despite international market pressure and creditors’ conditionality, governments had some room for manoeuvre during a bail out and were able to advocate, resist, shape or roll back some of the policies demanded by external actors. Under certain circumstances, domestic actors were also able to exploit the constraint of conditionality to their own advantage. The book additionally shows that after a bail-out programme governments could use their discretion to revert the measures which bring the greatest benefits at a lower cost. For a summary of our findings look at: https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/69297
... The repeal of the Fornero reform introduced in 2012 as a measure of austerity to cope with the Eurozone crisis was one of the main political priorities for LN because it hit one of its core groups of voters.Barbieri et al., (2018) reported that many of the 660,000 workers that would benefit from Quota 100 are male workers in Northern regions like Lombardy, Veneto, Piedmont, and Emilia-Romagna. They started working early with a stable contract allowing them to reach service seniority at a relatively young age(Afonso & Bulfone, 2019). In addition, over time, the LN accumulated considerable experience in the governorship of some of the wealthiest regions in the country: Lombardy, Piedmont, and Veneto.29 ...
This dissertation aims to identify how welfare chauvinism influenced social policies reforms from 2010 to 2020 in Italy and the Netherlands. During the analysis has been considered the end of the social activism of the Court of Justice of the European Union since 1990s, as well as the rise of new right-wing populist parties in Western politics. The welfare agendas of these parties are based on the theories of welfare chauvinism, welfare populism and nativism. Their electoral success is a direct consequence of creating new structural conflicts and cleavages that emerged in Western European countries since the introduction of austerity measures in 2010 and the refugee crisis of 2015. The creation of new welfare coalition configurations allowed new right-wing parties to increase their electoral success and become key national politics players. However, in Italy the Lega Nord (LN) and in the Netherlands the Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) did not managed to translate into law a concrete shift and restriction of welfare state benefits entitlements. Although they both based their electoral programmes on the notion of welfare chauvinism, distinguishing between “us” and “them”, between the natives who deserve the benefits and the “others” who underserve any kind of social assistance, this never concretely happened in none of the two countries. After all, it has been identified a shift in both parties from “welfare exclusion” toward a new approach of “welfare favouritism” and “welfare conditionality”. It has been registered a tendency to give priority and preferential treatment to the “natives” in the allocation of social services, referring to eligibility as something conditional on minimal period of residence and cultural assimilation.
... Moury, Cardoso and Gago (2019) show that two-thirds of the spending cuts introduced in Spain and Portugal during the crisis have been reversed, and these reversals were mainly to policies with concentrated benefits and diffuse costs. Finally, Afonso and Bulfone (2019) show how political parties' proposals for reversals are linked to the interests of their core constituencies. All these studies converge in finding that when governments are forced to make budgetary choices, they will maintain (or increase) visible spending and make cuts in less visible areas. ...
... By 2018, Salvini's renamed Lega made inroads in the south and the islands (5.3%) and in the subsequent 2019 EP elections it reached 23% in those regions, making it for the first time a strong national party dominating the centre-right field. Afonso and Bulfone (2019) and Ipsos (2019) show that the profile of Lega voters became increasingly comparable to the classic electorate of Berlusconi's center-right: self-employed workers and small entrepreneurs, housewives, but also blue-collar workers. Their educational attainment is medium to low, they reside in small and medium-sized municipalities and are informed exclusively or mainly through TV. ...
This article contributes to the emerging studies of populist radical right parties’ social policies by looking at two cases, Italy and Poland, where such parties have been in office without the constraint of mainstream pro-market coalition partners. The comparison of two cases with different historical/institutional paths and economic conditions shows how important high-visibility, high-expenditure social policies can be for populist radical right parties (PRRPs) once in government. More specifically, the analysis of pension and family policies reveals important parallels in the revamping of familialistic aspects of the welfare state, despite demographic and economic pressures. The findings demonstrate that social policy is more important and less focussed on welfare chauvinism than assumed by the literature on PRRPs. This is explained by PRRPs’ electoral expansion strategy towards more deprived groups, which in countries with a strong conservative Catholic presence is achieved through ideological repertoire expansion towards familialism, which can address both the material and cultural interests of the new electorate.
... In 2019 the total contribution of travel and tourism to the gross domestic product (GDP) of Italy, Spain, and Portugal was, respectively, 13 percent, 14 percent, and 17 percent, far above the median of high-income countries and, in all cases, only behind the contribution of financial ser vices and-another hard-hit sector-retail (WTTC, 2020). Second, a comparatively high proportion of the workforce in these countries is composed of low-skilled manual and ser vice sector workers (Afonso & Bulfone, 2019) as well as by temporary employees (22 percent in Spain, 17 percent in Portugal, and 13 percent in Italy, against an EU average of 11 percent) (Eurostat, 2020b). That results in large shares of jobs at risk of destruction by the pandemic and that cannot be performed remotely (OECD, 2020), and, on the other hand, in comparatively high numbers of employees that enjoy limited social protection and job security (Sabat et al., 2020). ...
... In 2019 the total contribution of travel and tourism to the gross domestic product (GDP) of Italy, Spain, and Portugal was, respectively, 13 percent, 14 percent, and 17 percent, far above the median of high-income countries and, in all cases, only behind the contribution of financial ser vices and-another hard-hit sector-retail (WTTC, 2020). Second, a comparatively high proportion of the workforce in these countries is composed of low-skilled manual and ser vice sector workers (Afonso & Bulfone, 2019) as well as by temporary employees (22 percent in Spain, 17 percent in Portugal, and 13 percent in Italy, against an EU average of 11 percent) (Eurostat, 2020b). That results in large shares of jobs at risk of destruction by the pandemic and that cannot be performed remotely , and, on the other hand, in comparatively high numbers of employees that enjoy limited social protection and job security (Sabat et al., 2020). ...
COVID-19 is the most significant global crisis of any of our lifetimes. The numbers have been stupefying, whether of infection and mortality, the scale of public health measures, or the economic consequences of shutdown. Coronavirus Politics identifies key threads in the global comparative discussion that continue to shed light on COVID-19 and shape debates about what it means for scholarship in health and comparative politics. Editors Scott L. Greer, Elizabeth J. King, Elize Massard da Fonseca, and André Peralta-Santos bring together over 30 authors versed in politics and the health issues in order to understand the health policy decisions, the public health interventions, the social policy decisions, their interactions, and the reasons. The book’s coverage is global, with a wide range of key and exemplary countries, and contains a mixture of comparative, thematic, and templated country studies. All go beyond reporting and monitoring to develop explanations that draw on the authors' expertise while engaging in structured conversations across the book.
