Matteo Jessoula

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• PhD, Political Science
• Professor (Full) at University of Milan

When observed in comparative perspective, until the early-1990s the Italian welfare state was clearly an outlier, characterized by an unbalanced allocation of resources among welfare sectors (so-called functional distortion) and towards social groups (distributive distortion). Since then, however, profound transformations have affected both the ins...

Taranto, città perfetta per Pier Paolo Pasolini, è lo specchio delle conseguenze socio-ambientali del modello di sviluppo industriale. Nella città ionica, definita zona di sacrificio dall’ONU, si coagulano i costi sociali e ambientali di produzioni (siderurgico, petrolchimico) estremamente profittevoli e al contempo inquinanti e dannose per la salu...

Vent’anni di riforme prevalentemente sottrattive di ispirazione neoliberista (1992-2011) hanno ripristinato la sostenibilità economico-finanziaria del sistema pensionistico italiano, lasciando però criticità, sia nel breve che nel medio-lungo periodo, sul versante della soste-nibilità sociale e della connessa tenuta politica del sistema. Nel quadro...

In European countries, Minimum Income Schemes (MIS) – intended as non-contributory, means-tested monetary benefits for working age individuals aimed to reduce poverty and social exclusion – constitute key last-resort safety nets against the risk of poverty and social exclusion. However, extensive variation appears in the design, function, instituti...

Il primo Quaderno OCIS del 2023 include una serie di contributi originali apparsi sulla testata online Welforum.it e raccolti poi ne Il Punto “Il salario minimo: Italia, Europa?” Oggetto di intenso dibattito pubblico nell’ultimo quinquennio, nonché di diverse proposte di legge e, da ultimo, della commissione di esperti istituita dal ministro del l...

A growing corpus of literature has analysed the main features, modes of functioning as well as the logics of institutional reproduction and change of welfare (and welfare state) arrangements in the four countries clustered in the Southern European model of welfare (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain). The chapter reviews such literature identifying...

This report analyses some important cash and in-kind social protection provisions available to adults with disabilities (i.e. people aged 18 or above). There are other important provisions available to them in other areas not covered in this report. In line with Article 1 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, “people with...

The purpose of this report is to identify and analyse policies put in place by the country to improve transparency in access to social protection, considering both access to information and simplification of access. The report focuses on the six social protection branches covered in the 2019 Council Recommendation on “Access to social protection fo...

The fight against poverty and social exclusion has been on the European agenda for a long-time. Since the mid-2010s, a number of events conjured towards stronger mobilization of stakeholders – primarily European social NGOs and trade unions – at supranational level. Moreover, in recent years, institutional, economic-contextual as well as political...

Substantial labour market flexibilisation over the period 1997-2015 often led to significant coverage gaps and inadequate protection against various social risks for workers in atypical employment, affecting in particular young workers. Traditional welfare state arrangements designed during the industrial age did not offer the same protection as th...

This chapter examines the idea that a distinct Southern European welfare model exists within European social protection systems. It focuses on the core social protection pillars: pensions, labor market policies, social assistance, health care, social care, and family policies. The chapter looks at the reforms in welfare systems in Italy, Portugal,...

This chapter examines the idea that a distinct Southern European welfare model exists within European social protection systems. It focuses on the core social protection pillars: pensions, labor market policies, social assistance, health care, social care, and family policies. The chapter looks at the reforms in welfare systems in Italy, Portugal,...

This paper reviews the evolution of EU social policy over the last two decades and provides an assessment of the most recent strategy, Europe 2020, in the field of social policy along four different layers of analysis: EU priorities, grand strategy, governance mode and policy initiatives. Since the launch of the EU integration process with the Rome...

This article introduces a novel analytical framework to compare the changing positions of five populist right-wing parties in the field of welfare policies. Results outline that a novel programmatic approach on the socio economic dimension materialised, which clearly departs from traditional right wing ideologies. We call it ‘exclusionary welfarism...

Licenza d'uso L'articoloè messo a disposizione dell'utente in licenza per uso esclusivamente privato e personale, senza scopo di lucro e senza fini direttamente o indirettamente commerciali. Salvo quanto espressamente previsto dalla licenza d'uso Rivisteweb,è fatto divieto di riprodurre, trasmettere, distribuire o altrimenti utilizzare l'articolo,...

Introduced in 2011, the European Semester has been a prominent governance process at the European Union level for over a decade. Initially mainly focussed on macroeconomic and fiscal priorities, over the years attention to social policies has also increased. In the intentions of the von der Leyen Commission, and in line with the ambitions of the Eu...

Between Monday 3 February 2020 and Sunday 18 April 2021, the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people was 6,740 for the EU-27 as a whole; in Italy, it was 6,554. The total number of deaths per 100,000 people was 151 for the EU-27 versus 197 in Italy. Italy was actually one of the countries which were hit the hardest by the COVID-...

Life conditions and market mechanisms generate inequalities, which may be neutralized, reproduced or even aggravated by welfare systems and pension rules. Therefore, the article first outlines the complex relationship between inequality and pensions both analytically and in a comparative-historical perspective. Then, it applies the conceptual and a...

Traditionally at the margins of the political debate, minimum income protection has recently become a key issue in Italian politics. After decades of social and political “neglect” letting Italy the only European country (with Greece) still lacking an anti‐poverty minimum income safety net in the 2010s, finally a national programme called Inclusion...

Article 43 of the Italian constitution refers to “essential public services” as those services of major public and general interest, which have to be guaranteed by the state and may be managed by public institutions and/or by private regulated firms. The expression “essential public services” is also used in the legislation concerning the right to...

L'articolo si concentra sullo stato di realizzazione dell'architettura pensionistica a più pilastri in Italia, disegnata ormai oltre un quarto di secolo fa con le Riforme Amato (1992-1993) e Dini (1995), e perseguita da governi di diverso colore attraverso una serie di interventi incrementali. Aggiornando i dati statistici al 2019, e specialmente c...

Negli ultimi due anni il dibattito, spesso arroventato, sul sistema pen-sionistico italiano si è sostanzialmente concentrato sulle regole di accesso al pensionamento, o per meglio dire sulla disputa attorno alla co-siddetta «Quota 100», che come noto consente di anticipare sensibil-mente il pensionamento se in possesso dei requisiti combinati di et...

Dopo la poderosa espansione delle pensioni nei Trente Glorieuses 1945-75, dai primi anni Novanta una lunga serie di riforme prevalentemente sottrattive ha radicalmente trasformato l’architettura previdenziale italiana. L’articolo adotta pertanto una prospettiva intergenerazionale al fine di valutare come e in quale misura è mutato lo scenario previ...

La povertà energetica è un tema sempre più presente nell’agenda politica europea. Ma se in Paesi come il Regno Unito il concetto di fuel poverty è di dominio comune ormai da anni, in Italia ha acquisito una rilevanza solo in tempi recenti, perlopiù sulla spinta di iniziative comunitarie. Benché misure di contrasto al fenomeno siano in vigore da orm...

In questo capitolo si analizza la traiettoria evolutiva del sistema pensionistico italiano in prospettiva storico-comparata. Gli snodi principali della tutela della vecchiaia nel nostro paese sono inoltre oggetto di un’analisi interpretativa volta a mettere a fuoco, in chiave politologica, i fattori e i processi responsabili di tale evoluzione. Nel...

Housing distress is widespread in Italy due to the traditionally limited public investment in the housing field – exacerbated by both the Great Recession and the subsequent slow recovery, which have caused the impoverishment of several categories of families experiencing housing hardship. Existing data are consistent in outlining the comparatively...

Nel campo delle politiche sociali la letteratura ha tradizionalmente riservato un ruolo di second’ordine allo studio dei rapporti tra partiti di destra e trasformazione dei sistemi di Welfare. Recentemente, tuttavia, diversi studi sulle elezioni in Europa e negli Stati Uniti hanno messo in luce il potenziale di mobilitazione della working class, e...

In recent years the increased electoral relevance of populist anti-establishment parties in several European democracies has steered scholar attention to these “new” parties’ positions on redistribution, the functioning of the economy and, last but not least, the welfare state. Nonetheless, with the exception of few recent studies on Radical Right...

Questo rapporto mira a fornire un’analisi approfondita dei livelli di spesa e delle trasformazioni in atto per quanto concerne le fonti di finanziamento del sistema di protezione sociale italiano, allo scopo di formulare una serie di considerazioni sullo stato di salute di quest’ultimo. L’analisi poggia sull’utilizzo di una serie di indicatori più...

Since April 2019, a new minimum income scheme, the “Citizenship Income”, is being implemented in Italy. It is more generous than the previous scheme in terms of eligibility conditions, benefit amount and duration. However, some weaknesses are apparent, mostly concerning its effectiveness in protecting large households, strict conditionality rules a...

After two decades of substantial pension retrenchment and the harsh austerity measures of the period 2009-11, the 2019 Di Maio-Salvini reform (decreto legge 4/2019) represents the third expansionary intervention in the field of pensions since 2016. It follows the new policy path, already inaugurated by the 2016 Poletti-Renzi reform, which combines...

Due to its peculiar combination of soft governance mechanisms with a hard quantitative target, in the field of anti-poverty policy the EU's overarching strategy Europe 2020 marked relevant discontinuity vis à vis the Lisbon strategy and the Social OMC. It was, thus, initially welcomed by the literature as a promising step towards stronger social Eu...

This paper explores the potential for “environmental” (green) and “social” (red) European NGOs and trade unions to jointly mobilize, pursuing synergies between ecological/environmental and social goals, as well as to drive bottom-up policy change at the European Union level. The main research question is thus the following: do European NGOs and tra...

The article focuses on the recent evolution of occupational and fiscal welfare in Italy by shedding light on some subtle, yet important, recent transformations of the Italian welfare state. First, it provides up-to-date information on the introduction of legislative changes in this policy field. Second, it investigates the policy-making processes t...

Nei paesi del Sud Europa, tradizionalmente, la distribuzione della spesa sociale tendeva ad essere significativamente sbilanciata a favore degli anziani. L’ articolo introduce la nozione di ricalibratura intergenerazionale allo scopo di individuare, e di analizzare, le riforme volte a ri-bilanciare il profilo generazionale del welfare state italian...

After two decades of substantial pension retrenchment and the harsh austerity reforms of the period 2009-11, a novel pension path was opened by the Poletti-Renzi reform in 2016. This was then further refined in 2018 (see ESPN Flash Reports 2017/12 and 2018/41) and followed by the adoption of Law Decree No. 4/2019 on 28 January 2019. The three refor...

An in-depth analysis of current levels and trends in respect of both social protection receipts and social protection expenditure allows us to formulate a set of considerations on the existing model for funding social expenditure in Italy. First, in the period 2005-2016 social protection expenditure did not increase dramatically in real terms in It...

Italy is characterised by a comparatively high rate of in-work poverty (IWP)1: in 2017, the incidence of IWP was 12.3% in Italy, versus 9.6% on average in the EU, and the risk of IWP increased by 1.2 percentage points (pp) in the period 2012-2017. The selfemployed are characterised by a higher IWP risk than employees (19.5% vs 10.1% in 2017), and t...

이탈리아 사회보장제도는 사회보험의 원리를 중심으로 하는 전형적인 비스마르크 모델의 형태를 갖추었다. 이탈리아 산업구조는 제조업을 중심으로 구성되어 있었으며, 남성 생계부양자 모델의 가족구조를 오랫동안 유지해 왔다. 이는 이탈리아가 국민의 사회권리와 보편주의를 우선시하기보다 근로자를 소득 상실의 위험으로부터 보호하는 소득비례인 사회보장시스템을 갖췄다는 에서도 확인할 수 있다. 반면에 사회서비스업에 있어서는 보충성(subsidiarity) 원칙을 적용하여 국가개입은 잔여적이었고, 서비스를 제공하는 주 행위자는 가족과 종교적인 단체였다. 타 서유럽 복지국가들과 유사하게 이탈리아도 복지황금기를 거쳐 사회지출 수준이 GDP의 3...

Traditionally, Southern European countries displayed remarkably elderly biased social policy arrangements. This article introduces the notion of intergenerational recalibration to capture reforms aimed at rebalancing the generational profile of Southern European welfare states via the expansion of family policy and social assistance schemes—both mo...

After the light reforms legislated in 2016 and 2017, the plans to reform pensions make a turn with the proposals of the new Italian government which aim at relaxing eligibility conditions erga omnes, introducing a “citizenship pension” and cutting “gold pension” benefits.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14616696.2018.1494300?journalCode=reus20 The paper addresses a topic still largely under-researched in comparative welfare state literature: the role of right parties in the reform of last resort safety nets. More precisely, the study investigates minimum income schemes’ reforms promoted during the Great...

The Italian public long-term care (LTC) system shows the following main facets. • Amount of resources: in 2016 around EUR 19 billion (1.13% of GDP) was spent by the Italian state on covering the needs of the elderly population; in real terms the expenditure increased only slightly between 2005 and 2016 (+3%), but it decreased strongly if considered...

"An exemplary multi-level comparative study of the Europe 2020 anti-poverty strategy, based on a rigorous analytical framework. A particular strength of the volume is its actor-centred approach and process-tracing methodology, which demonstrates the crucial role of domestic opposition and support in shaping the national effects of the EU's poverty-...

Presenti ormai da decenni in alcuni contesti territoriali, gli schemi regionali di reddito minimo hanno ancora un ruolo indefinito nel sistema italiano di protezione del reddito. Questo contributo mira a ricostruire le traiettorie di policy in due ragioni italiane, caratterizzate da peculiari contesti istituzionali e socio-economici: Basilicata e C...

A latecomer to supplementary funded pension provision, Italy’s multi-pillarisation plan was launched in the 1990s under extremely adverse conditions. Supplementary schemes were expected to achieve universal coverage relying primarily on second pillar occupational pension funds. Twenty-five years after its launch, the comprehensive plan can hardly b...

With the adoption of Law No 33/2017 and the subsequent 2018 Stability Law, Italy has filled the traditional gap in social protection, introducing both a national minimum income scheme and an integrated system of social services aimed at active inclusion. However, the extent to which all those in extreme poverty will be protected may be limited.

The aim of this paper is to provide a first sketch of an analytical framework which could be used for the comparative analysis of welfare state developments , under the form of emergence, consolidation, expansion and reform. We shall do so inspired by Flora and Heidenheimer's (1981) seminal work on the development of the welfare state, and more spe...

Se osservato in prospettiva comparata, il regime – o modello – di welfare italiano ha tradizionalmente mostrato un’accentuazione del ruolo svolto da due sfere istituzionali: lo stato e la famiglia. Al contrario, il mercato (assicurazioni private) e i corpi intermedi (tra cui i sindacati) hanno giocato un ruolo marginale nel fornire protezione contr...

La sezione monografica punta il fuoco sugli incastri, più o meno virtuosi, tra welfare occupazionale e welfare pubblico. Sulla scorta della letteratura esistente, specialmente di taglio comparato, la sezione fornisce una griglia analitica volta a cogliere le sfide emergenti dall’espansione del welfare occupazionale, nel quadro della più ampia trasf...

This book – based on a research project carried out by the Observatoire Social Européen asbl, with the financial support of the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) – looks at the most recent developments in pension policy and politics in Europe and advances our understanding of the field in three respects: firstly, it contributes to improve our k...

Workshop on Supplementary pensions Organised jointly by the European Commission and the OECD 3 May 2017 Centre Albert Borschette Brussels Developing supplementary pensions on top of earnings-related public pillars. Assessing the Italian trajectory 25 years on

Workshop ”Delivering higher effective retirement ages” organised jointly by the European Commission & the OECD, Brussels, 28 June 2017

https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.7389/86417 The «pension package» included in the 2017 Stability Law includes several measures which mark discontinuity vis à vis the austerity driven reforms of the period 2009-11. The new measures only expand old age expenditure, but they are also apparently innovative in their design and goals. By relying on the...

In Italy in 2015, more than one worker in three (35%) was not an employee with an open-ended contract. The share of this type of employee in total employment was thus much lower in Italy (65%) than the European Union average (72%). Women constitute 30% of all self-employed persons and around half of employees with temporary work. The share of tempo...

In Italy, living conditions worsened for children between 2008 and 2015. This was due to the economic recession that began in 2008, as well as the generally insufficient policy measures and institutional capacity to “invest in children”, as advocated by the 2013 Recommendation of the European Commission. An analysis based on the indicators adopted...

La riforma pensionistica licenziata con la Legge di Stabilità 2017 contiene numerose misure che segnano una significativa discontinuità rispetto ai provvedimenti anti-crisi adottati nel periodo 2009-11. Ciò non soltanto per il carattere espansivo dell’intervento, che mira in primo luogo a contrastare le più dure conseguenze sociali delle riforme pr...

In recent years, poverty and anti-poverty measures have gained new momentum in Southern and Eastern European countries, which have traditionally featured weak social safety nets. This was the result of three main factors: i) increased “problem pressure” in most countries, as a consequence of the recession and austerity measures; ii) in some cases,...

Since 1993, legislation has recognized workers in arduous or hazardous jobs (WAHJ) as those performing particularly strenuous manual jobs, and a list of concerned categories was drafted in 2007. The issue of such jobs has gained salience in Italy since the early 1990s, following the first reforms aimed at prolonging working life by both closing/nar...

The Italian government has launched a national plan to fight increasing poverty and social exclusion. It may represent a first step towards the establishment of both a national minimum income scheme and an integrated social system of social services aimed at active inclusion.

«Qualunque sia l’origine del calo prospettico del livello delle pensioni, la già richiamata rilevanza dei trattamenti pensionistici nei redditi degli anziani rende cruciale l’adozione di strategie che fronteggino il fenomeno. Due sono gli indirizzi strategici, in proposito, da segnalare: lo sviluppo del sistema pensionistico integrativo (a capitali...

The so-called ‘European Social Dimension’ has been the subject of a vast debate in the past couple of decades. The literature tends to be divided between cautious optimism and Euro-pessimism. The optimists point to the purposeful autonomy of key institutions in Europe’s ‘multilevel’ polity and the gradual ‘socialization’ of the EU regulatory order....

As argued in chapter 4, a social-friendly institutional re-articulation of the novel Europeanised space of interaction requires the construction of a EU “social space” in order to effectively “nest” national welfare states within the overall spatial architecture of the EU (Ferrera 2009). This has necessarily to be a gradual and complex process sinc...

Il sistema pensionistico italiano, oggetto di ripetute riforme e reiterati tentativi di razionalizzazione, presenta numerose criticità alle quali non sempre si guarda con la dovuta attenzione. In realtà l’ottimalità di qualsiasi schema pensionistico va valutata necessariamente alla luce dei rischi che emergono nei mercati. In particolare, la prolun...

In Italy the supply of LTC has been traditionally characterised by a highly selective public services system set against the considerable capacity of family (especially women) and kinship networks to internalise caring functions. Since the late 1990s this configuration of care arrangements has been put under pressure by the ageing of the population...

In Italy, a nation-wide minimum income scheme (MIS) is still missing. However, in accordance with a decentralisation process which transferred competence in the field of social assistance to subnational levels of government, means-tested social assistance schemes approximating MIS criteria were introduced in a number of regions and municipalities....

Sono trascorsi ormai vent’anni da quando, nel 1995, fu approvata la riforma Dini, che rivoluzionò il sistema pensionistico italiano sostituendo il tradizionale metodo di calcolo retributivo con quello contributivo. Questo numero monografico di Politiche Sociali coglie l’occasione di tale anniversario per una valutazione della riforma e, più in gene...

The chapter analyzes the developmental trajectory of the two main pillars of the Italian welfare state—that is, pensions and health care, accounting for roughly 90 percent of total social expenditure—by identifying four different phases: i) expansion in the 1950s–70s, ii) ambivalent and chaotic restructuring in the 1980s, iii) encompassing reforms...

The analysis of the gender aspects of the financial crisis and economic downturn on the Italian welfare system must necessarily start from the recognition that, first, “the crisis” has assumed distinctive traits in Italy - also different from other Mediterranean countries like Greece, Portugal and Spain. Three different crises have actually emerged...

In recent years, poverty and anti‐poverty measures have gained new momentum in both Southern and Eastern European countries, which have traditionally featured weak social safety nets. This was the result of two main factors: i) increased “problem pressure” in most countries, as a consequence of the recession and austerity measures; ii) pressure fro...

Per la prima volta nel nostro paese soggetti sociali di diversa matrice e provenienza hanno siglato un patto aperto contro la povertà allo scopo di svolgere un'azione di advocacy a livello nazionale e di costruire, a livello locale, politiche territoriali. Quale significato assume tutto questo oggi? E quali sono le potenzialità e i rischi di questa...

Paper prepared for the 20th International Conference of Europeanists “Crisis and Contingency: States of (In)stability”, Amsterdam, 25-27 June 2013

The supranational strategy “Europe 2020” came along with two main novelties for social policy coordination in the EU: a quantified poverty reduction target and a new governance framework – the “European Semester”. In the aim of assessing the effectiveness of the novel strategy in prompting the emergence of a European(-ized) anti-poverty arena - thu...

The social investment (SI) approach is very ambitious. Unfortunately, it has yet to be consistently streamlined across the different social policy sectors in Italy. The functionally unbalanced – towards old age protection - fragmented and corporatist nature of the Italian welfare system has hampered the development of policies that combine SI strat...

In Italy, few measures have specifically addressed the needs of the long-term unemployed (LTU), particularly after their eligibility (based on contribution history) to unemployment benefits (UB) has ended. However, the LTU are eligible for the measures available to all unemployed persons. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of UB was limited in terms...

In the midst of the economic, financial and sovereign debt crises, the shift from the “Lisbon agenda” to the “Europe 2020” phase in 2010 - with the launch of the novel European strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth - has represented a critical juncture for European coordination strategies in the social policy sector. Compared to the...

Italy and Poland present similarly weak minimum income protection models, yet this results from two different policy trajectories in the last 15 years: both countries actually introduced a minimum income scheme (MIS) between the late 1990s (Italy) and the early 2000s (Poland), but later developments were characterized by policy reversal in the Ital...

Vent’anni di riforme sembrano aver permesso al nostro sistema pensionistico di raggiungere un punto di equilibrio tra sostenibilità economica e adeguatezza delle prestazioni. Tuttavia, il progressivo impoverimento del ceto medio e l’aumento del numero di lavoratori con contratto atipico, che sono solo debolmente garantiti nell’attuale sistema (mult...

Initially welcomed as a relevant step forward for the EU social dimension, the Europe 2020 quantitative poverty target, aimed at lifting 20 million people out of poverty by 2020, appears less reachable today than three years ago. Not only poverty is on the rise in Europe and recent austerity measures in several Member States might kill the «sick pa...

Several studies in comparative welfare state research have emphasized the absence of a proper anti-poverty strategy and especially the lack of a minimum income scheme (MIS) in Italy; others focused on the failed attempt to introduce a national MIS in the late 1990s; while some scholars investigated the existence of several (yet often meagre) local...

Following the major reforms adopted in 2009-2011, since 2012 only minor amendments have been introduced in the pension sector, but changes in pension parameters have resulted from the implementation of the latest 2010 and 2011 reforms (Sacconi and Fornero reforms). These aimed at reducing expenditure in the short-medium term by means of both measur...

From the “EU-Rescue” to the “EU-Trap”: Reforming the Italian Welfare State (1992-2012) Due to the Bismarckian imprint and the Southern European character of the Italian welfare regime, the Italian employment and social policies have traditionally presented a marked misfit with the emerging European social policy structure. In the last two decades,...

Italy is among the European countries which have proceeded the farthest in reforming pensions in the last two decades. A transition to a multipillar structure was launched (1993) and a NDC system was introduced in the first pillar (1995). The literature has shown that, on the one hand, retrenchment interventions in the 1990s were made possible exte...