Maurizio Ferrera

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• Ph.D. in Social and Political Sciences, European University Institute, 1984
• Professor at University of Milan

The article illustrates the different meanings of the term “logic” in Weber’s work and then proceeds to discuss his approach to the explanation of historical events and in particular to counterfactual analysis. Weber’s epistemology is first situated within the neoKantian debates of his time as well as legal positivism and historical jurisprudence....

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic pushed the European Union (EU) to centralize several public health functions. With the European Health Union (EHU) initiative, four reforms have been adopted to strengthen the EU’s health security framework: the extension of the European Medicines Agency and the European Centre for Disease Prevention...

Multilevel polities do not typically facilitate secession, so why did the European Union adopt Article 50? Revisiting formative debates from the 2003 Convention on the Future of Europe, we combine archival research with an original dataset of delegate debates over two levels: the existence and procedural operation of an exit article. This reveals e...

The transition to the service-based knowledge economy, together with socio-demographic transformations such as increased dual-earnership and changing family patterns, has profoundly reshaped post-industrial labour markets. In many European countries a divide has emerged between those workers who have access to standard open-ended employment and tho...

This chapter reviews key social policy challenges entailed by the transition towards a climate neutral society, particularly focusing on the opportunities and risks that such a transition implies for attaining good quality jobs and material sufficiency for all. In addition to preventing a reinforcing of socio-economic inequalities as a result of cl...

This chapter reviews the social consequences of the globalisation process and the associated expansion of the knowledge-based economy in advanced capitalist countries. It argues that the insecurities caused by globalisation are putting a strain on the capacity of democracies to promote change in an orderly way. They also trigger a process of disart...

This chapter turns the attention to the European Union and its ‘social dimension’. The European integration project has been pointed out as one of the most comprehensive attempts at internalizing and, possibly, controlling the socioeconomic transformations described in the previous chapters. Since its inception, the European integration project was...

The transition to postindustrial, globalized societies and economies has generated new social groups that are not well inserted in today’s labour markets and which are not adequately supported by established welfare state institutions. In the twentieth century, the working class was capable to gain enough political weigh to drive a societal ‘counte...

Automation, digitalisation, the post-industrial transition and climate change are creating new social risks which are not adequately supported by established welfare state institutions. In this timely book, Maurizio Ferrera, Joan Miró and Stefano Ronchi propose critical social and institutional policy reform in response to the nation state’s inabil...

This chapter surveys ongoing reform trends in advanced welfare states: those already in place, under way, or debated in academic or social policy circles. It begins by discussing the social investment approach, which – centred on the promotion of human capital – has become part and parcel of EU employment and social inclusion strategies since the 2...

Digitalisation and automation are radically changing the world of work. After reviewing the disruptive implications that these transformations have in terms of employment opportunities, workplace organisation and balance of power between employers and employees, the chapter reviews potential responses to ensure a fair distribution of resources in t...

This chapter takes stock of the diverse socio-economic challenges analysed in the book in order to show how the social policy paradigms that dominated politics of the second half of the twentieth century – postwar social democracy, neoliberalism, neo-welfarism – are unable address the subversion of the traditional structure of risks and opportuniti...

This concluding chapter underlines that Great Transformation 2.0, illustrated in the book, goes farther and more profoundly beyond national borders than the first Great Transformation did over than a century ago. Today, the nation state is no longer able to safeguard the compatibility of Dahrendorf’s quartet, made up of the rule of law, the welfare...

This introductory article to the Special Issue Marshall in Brussels? A new perspective on social citizenship and the European Union first argues that there is a need for a novel systematic framework that captures the increasingly complex web of relationships between the European level and the national and local levels in the creation and implementa...

The launch of the European Pillar of Social Rights has reinvigorated the debate on the role that the European Union can exercise in the sphere of subjective rights. Such debate has traditionally focused on the limits of the current social acquis, considered unable to create fully-fledged European social citizenship, that ultimately remains limited...

The EU is still fragile after its long decade of crises since 2008, and its durability remains an open question. New capacities were created during this time. But it is not clear how robust they are and whether developing them further will encounter insurmountable obstacles, including resentment by citizens. Over time, tensions and disagreements un...

The EU is a new form of political organisation which can be defined as an “experimental polity”. Its distinctiveness lies in a novel assemblage of the constituent elements of polity (boundaries, binding authority, and bonding ties), and in the constant testing of new combinations of such elelements when facing functional and political challenges. E...

The sequence of crises in the 2010s entirely changed the socio-economic context that had inspired the Lisbon strategy in the year 2000. EU policy veered towards austerity and social policy became an ‘adjustment variable’. Since the mid-2010s, however, a slow process of rebalancing has gained ground, culminating in the adoption of the European Pilla...

This is the comprehensively revised second edition of a volume that was welcomed at its first appearance as ‘the most authoritative survey and critique of the welfare state yet published’. Of its fifty-one chapters, some chapters are brand new; all have been systematically revised, and they are all right up to date. The first seven sections of the...

The link to each of our articles is included. This collection of articles includes our reflections on social Europe, based on insights we have gained into the political dynamics, as well as policy outputs and outcomes across the EU. We offer different perspectives on developments of social Europe, current challenges, and possible future directions....

This article investigates the ‘conflict parabola’ of the negotiations between EU member states during the COVID-19 pandemic. The crisis reopened the foundational controversy over cross-national solidarity under economic adversities. After a peak of conflict in March–April 2020, the political climate gradually shifted from antagonism to appeasement,...

EU citizenship has long been considered as a mere instrument to uphold a common labor market resting on free movement. Worker mobility is, however, raising increasing social and political strains within and between countries. The paper argues that EU benefits should be made more visible and salient for ‘stay at home’ people, in order to defuse the...

La crisi economica, il persistere di una generale condizione di austerità, l’instabilità politica nazionale e globale, un sistema pubblico che fatica nel rispondere adeguatamente a molti rischi e bisogni sociali dei cittadini: sono solo alcuni degli elementi che oggi influenzano il welfare italiano. Nel contempo sono però sempre più numerosi gli at...

Lo scopo del presente articolo è studiare il cosidetto neowelfarismo liberale e le nuove prospettive per lo stato sociale europeo. Innanzitutto, viene discusso il neoliberismo che ha avuto una fase d’ascesa negli anni ottanta, una d’appiattimento intorno alla metà degli anni novanta e una di discesa negli anni duemila. Viene studiata la sfida lanci...

Weber’s conception of politics has long been interpreted in relativistic and “agonistic” terms. Such interpretations neglect Weber’s notion of “objectivity” as well as the complex links between politics as “community,” on the one hand, and as “value sphere,” on the other. Seen against this backdrop, Berufpolitik becomes a balancing act in which the...

The recent economic shocks have severely tested the EU's political sustainability. The deep-rooted and unending succession of existential crises demonstrates the sharp misalignment between the high degree of integration reached by the EU, its authority structure, and the absence of solidarity to sustain this structure. The paper unfolds as follows:...

The very existence of the European Union is today under attack by an increasingly virulent Euroscepticism. In our view, the prime root of this "deep" political crisis is the sharp misalignment between the new nature of the EU after the establishment of EMU, its authority structure, and the normative order which underpins cooperation and the "sharin...

This contribution argues for strengthening EU citizenship in order to make it not only attractive for mobile Europeans but also for ‘stayers’ who feel left behind in processes of globalisation and European integration. EU citizenship is primarily ‘isopolitical’ and regulatory; it confers horizontal rights to people to enter the citizenship spaces o...

This Forum debate has gone way beyond my expectations and hopes. I thought that commentators would mainly address my proposals on enhancing rights and introducing duties. The conversation has instead extended to my diagnosis as well, to the rationale which lies at the basis of my prescriptive ideas. By focusing on starting points, the forum has thu...

During the twentieth century, the Liberal nation-state turned into the mass democratic Welfare state, which then became a Member state of the emerging European Union. To what extent is Weber’s state theory – which has been so influential within political studies – still pertinent for analyzing these two momentous transformations? This article propo...

In the mid-1970s, the great Norwegian scholar Stein Rokkan argued that the consolidation of the national welfare state was going to set definite limits to European integration. While the impetuous strengthening of the latter – from Maastricht to Lisbon – has largely disproved Rokkan’s factual expectations, developments during the last decade seem t...

The article starts from noting that the social deficit of the European Union has aggravated during the recent economic crisis, despite the ambitious social objectives included in the Lisbon Treaty. The balance between economic integration and the social dimension that EU Law and the case law of the CJEU have pursued during the years has been destab...

The aim of this paper is to investigate citizen views on the free movement of workers within the European Union (EU). We are interested in how situational and relational factors affect labour market chauvinist attitudes. Drawing on the threat theory, we advance new hypotheses on the role of intertemporal relative deprivation in amplifying chauvinis...

The historical and political debate has considered the relationship between war and social politics in terms of trade-off for a long time. War, especially if it is prolonged, tends to shift the social politics, mainly because of the new spending imperatives. However the most recent literature has adopted a more dissipated perspective widening the t...

What is the state of the art of the EU's social dimension? Is there room for improvement? This article addresses these two questions. First, it offers a summary reconstruction of the long and winding road which has led to the ambitious social provisions of the Lisbon Treaty. Social policy made its debut as an instrument to ensure the integration of...

Today, many people agree that the EU lacks solidarity and needs a social dimension. This debate is not new, but until now the notion of a 'social Europe' remained vague and elusive. To make progress, we need a coherent conception of the reasons behind, and the agenda for, not a 'social Europe', but a new idea: a European Social Union. We must motiv...

During the crisis, the European Union's ‘social deficit’ has triggered an increasing politicisation of redistributive issues within supranational, transnational and national arenas. Various lines of conflict have taken shape, revolving around who questions (who are ‘we’? – i.e., issues of identity and inclusion/exclusion); what questions (how much...

Intra-Eu mobility has become increasingly contested. Despite empirical evidence showing that migrants are not a burden for the receiving countries, a growing number of voters think that nationals should have priority in terms of jobs and welfare. In a realist perspective, this “nativist” turn cannot be ignored, as it might undermine the very idea o...

Southern Europe and East Asia are two distinct groups of nations which share a number of striking family resemblances warranting a close investigation. Such resemblances form a relatively coherent set best captured through the concepts of familialism and familial welfare state. A cross-regional comparison of Italy, Japan, Spain and Korea leads to i...

Reorienting the welfare state towards social investment (SI) constitutes a complex and multidimensional challenge of policy recalibration and raises daunting political problems. The temporal mismatch between SI reforms and their returns requires a degree of ‘political patience’ on the side of both current voters and incumbent politicians which is n...

The Renzi government seems to have adopted a novel «anticipatory-impositive» policy style. This note argues that such turn is indeed visible, but that its substantive goals are unclear: anticipatory of what? Why impositive, exactly? Italy is in desperate need of policy investments for the long term. What seems lacking in Renzi's leadership is a con...

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....

The article starts with a general discussion of how political science treats the question of «rights». In line with classical democratic theory (from max Weber and Schumpeter to Sartori and Dahl), the author argues that rights must be seen as «guaranteed powers». Special attention is paid to the approach of the Pavia School (Leoni, Albertini and in...

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 article investigates the role played by ideational dynamics in generating the strains and tensions which have exploded during the crisis between economic integration and social protection. Drawing on the insights of Weberian theory, the article argues that a reconciliation between these two dimensions/spheres of the EU must confront two distinc...

The article starts by identifying the main institutional components of the (elusive) concept of Social Europe: the ‘National Social Spaces’, i.e. the social protection systems of the member states; the ‘EU Social Citizenship Space’, i.e. the coordination regime that allows all EU nationals to access the social benefits of other member states when t...

Der nationale Wohlfahrtsstaat (NWS) und die Europäische Union (EU) sind zwei wertvolle Errungenschaften des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Ihre wechselseitige Beziehung wird allerdings durch ungelöste Spannungen (und einen potentiellen Zusammenstoß) belastet, die sich in der jüngsten Krise deutlich verschärft haben. Wann, warum und wie hat die ursprüngl...

This article aims at ‘bringing ideology back in’ for the analysis of party politics and, more specifically, for the discussion of the delicate dyad ‘responsiveness vs. responsibility’. The article starts with an analytical discussion on the concept of ideology and on how to study its adaptation and change. It then reviews the ideological shifts tha...

For at least two decades, European countries have been earnestly striving to reform their social models, tailored on increasingly surpassed economic and sociodemographic structures. The consistency between programmatic ambitions and reform practice is, however, not easy to gauge. Reforms introduced at the national level, largely focused on the big...

Il presente Rapporto intende fornire una prima rassegna e alcune prime interpretazioni e valutazioni di ciò che si sta muovendo nel nostro paese in termini di secondo welfareIl Rapporto è suddiviso in due parti. Nella prima vengono caratterizzati i principali protagonisti del secondo welfare in Italia (sistema delle imprese e sindacati, mondo assic...

The main argument of the paper is that, in welfare state discourse, neo-liberalism has followed a parabola of expansion (1980-early 1990s), flattening (1990s) and then gradual decline (2000s), leaving room for the emergence of a new post-neoliberal ideological synthesis, aimed at bridging the (readapted) socialdemocratic and liberal-democratic trad...

The encounter between territorially closed nation-based welfare states and European integration has generated a new 'spatial politics', defined by novel objects of contention (spatial positionings and movements) and new modes of contention (voice for/against entries or exits). Since the 1970s, the EU has undertaken a slow but incisive process of 's...

La spesa pensionistica più elevata d'Europa, limitate risorse destinate alla tutela delle famiglie, dei bambini, dei disoccupati e per il contrasto alla povertà. Dopo due decenni di riforme lo sbilanciamento "funzionale" - verso il settore previdenziale - e la distorsione "distributiva" - a favore degli occupati/insider - rappresentano ancora temi...

The pension systems of Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece are organized according to the Bismarckian blueprint: 'corporatist' schemes of compulsory insurance covering different occupational groups, with different regulations. Historically, Italy pioneered developments by introducing compulsory pension insurance in 1919. Portugal and Greece followed...

Why have neo-liberal economic ideas been so resilient since the 1980s, despite major intellectual challenges, crippling financial and political crises, and failure to deliver on their promises? Why do they repeatedly return, not only to survive but to thrive? This groundbreaking book proposes five lines of analysis to explain the dynamics of both c...

This chapter considers the fundamental question of how the notion of social citizenship in Europe has been transformed by the process of European integration. The first part revisits the classical notion of citizenship, in order to offer both an adequate conceptualization and an historical perspective to the discussion. The second part of the chapt...

To what extent has the process of European integration re-drawn the boundaries of national welfare states? What are the effects of such re-drawing? Boundaries count: they are essential in bringing together individuals, groups, and territorial units, and for activating or strengthening shared ties between them. If the profile of boundaries changes o...

European integration can be seen as a largely ‘liberal’ project. Since its inception, this project has, however, strongly emphasised the features of economic liberalism, neglecting other essential elements of the liberal tradition, including the limitation of political power, the defence of individual freedoms (not only in the economic sphere) and...

In recent years the EU has been witnessing a growing tension between the logic of 'closure', which underpins national welfare systems, and the logic of 'opening', which guides the integration process, especially in the economic sphere. Are there ways of mitigating such tension, in order to avoid negative consequences in terms of performance and leg...

The paper discusses the basic rationale which has inspired the intellectual re-orientation from «social protection» to «social investment», with particular attention to child policy. The first section outlines the main features of the social investment approach contrasting it with the more traditional «Fordist» approach. The second and third sectio...

For the welfare state the last 30 years have witnessed a turbulent transition from the ‘Golden Age’ of expansion to a ‘Silver Age’ of permanent austerity. This shift has been the result of external pressures and of internal transformations of domestic economies and social structures. Permanent austerity has entailed incisive institutional adaptatio...

For the welfare state the last thirty years have witnessed a turbulent transition from the "Golden Age" of expansion to a "Silver Age" of permanent austerity. This shift has been the result of external pressures (essentially: globalization and European integration) and of internal transformations of domestic economies and social structures. Permane...

Beginning in the 1970s, the Italian pension system came under political and scholarly scrutiny. Pension benefits were extremely generous—especially for civil servants—and created perverse incentives from the point of view of both equity and efficiency (Castellino 1976). Policy analysts and policy-makers also started to worry about the system’s grow...

To what extent and in what ways have European integration redrawn the boundaries of national welfare states? What are the effects of such redrawing? These questions are interesting and relevant because boundaries “count”: they are a pre-requisite for bonding individuals, groups, and territorial units, and for activating or strengthening their dispo...

To what extent and in what ways have European integration redrawn the boundaries of national welfare states? What are the effects of such redrawing? These questions are interesting and relevant because boundaries “count”: they are a pre-requisite for bonding individuals, groups, and territorial units, and for activating or strengthening their dispo...

1. Welfare States and Social Safety Nets in Southern Europe: An Introduction 2. Greece: Fighting with the Hands Tied Behind the Back 3. Italy: Striving Uphill but Stopping Halfway 4. Spain: Poverty, Social Exclusion and 'Safety Nets' 5. Portugal: A Virtuous Path Towards Minimum Income? 6. Poverty and the Safety Net in Eastern and South Eastern Euro...

The prime meaning of the expression “Southern Europe” is geographical. In its broad sense, this notion denotes the lands stretching from the Iberian Peninsula to the Bosphorus, including the largest islands of the Mediterranean Sea, from the Balearics to Cyprus. In a narrower sense, however, the expression is used to designate four specific countri...

The European state have been reassessing and reconfigurating the welfare state. At the same time, states have seen the decentralization of power and responsibility to the regional level, and the transfer of competencies to the European Unión. The book considers these processes in parallel, providing a comprehensive examination of the expansión and...

A welfare state world of path-dependent, but not predetermined, solutions Since the 1980s European monetary integration has been a driving force behind domestic welfare reform across the European Union (EU). Triggered by the failure of Keynesianism in the 1970s and by macroeconomic instability in the 1980s and early 1990s, monetary integration to E...

Since the nineteenth century, the social rights of citizenship have played a crucial role for the process of state and nation building in Europe.1 Such rights have given rise to wide “collectivities of redistribution” that have strengthened cultural identities, enhanced citizen loyalties to public institutions, and promoted a sharing of material re...

Als een gevolg van de politieke en economische onrust gedurende lange tijd in de naoorlogse periode, werd Italië gezien als het 'zwarte schaap' binnen de Europese Gemeenschap. Scherpe ideologische tegenstellingen, chronische bestuurlijke instabiliteit, een inefficiënte bureaucratie, abrupte sociaal-economische ontwikkelingen, georganiseerde misdaad...

El papel marginal de la asistencia social y la ausencia de programas de rentas mínimas han sido considerados como rasgos definitorios del modelo de bienestar de la Europa del Sur. Sin embargo, a lo largo de la década de los años 90 se han producido innovaciones significativas en este campo. El artículo lleva a cabo un análisis de los últimos desarr...

The marginal role of social assistance and the absence of minimum income programmes have long been thought to constitute defining characteristics of the southern European model of welfare. Nevertheless, over the 1990s significant innovations in this field have taken place. The paper aims to contribute to the analysis of recent developments by criti...

The creation of the welfare state (and, more speci.cally, of mass social insurance) has been one of the most significant achievements of the “long” twentieth century, now come to a close. Yet, since at least the 1980s the welfare state has been the object of heated controversy. The capacity of social policy to reconcile economic growth with social...

With the creation of EMU, European Welfare States have entered a new phase of development. The margins for manoeuvring public budgets have substantially decreased, while the unfolding of the four freedoms of movement within the EU have seriously weakened the traditional coercive monopoly of the state on actors and resources that are crucial for the...

The chapter presents, in synthesis form, some key elements of what is now understood about welfare regimes, their respective pathologies of development, their current paths of reform, and the challenges that still confront them. The first section examines welfare state performance thematically, focusing on employment, the scale and shape of social...

Europe and the United States confront common challenges in responding to the transformations of work and welfare in the ‘new economy’, and there are signs of far-reaching changes in the role of government as a direct result. This volume presents the latest research by a team of outstanding international contributors. Parts One and Two examine new a...

The marginal role of social assistance and the absence of minimum income programmes have long been thought to constitute defining characteristics of the southern European model of welfare. Nevertheless, over the 1990s significant innovations in this field have taken place. The article aims to contribute to the analysis of recent developments by cri...