Regional Politics of Welfare in Italy, Spain and Great Britain

Davide Vampa is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Politics and Public Policy, De Montfort University, UK. Previously he was Assistant Professor at the University of Nottingham, Teaching Fellow at SOAS and Guest Teacher at LSE. He has published several papers on the spatial transformation of welfare systems and multilevel party politics.

• Introduction.- Chapter 1. Theoretical Framework, Research Hypotheses, Case Selection and Methodology.- Chapter 2. Italy. Territorial mobilisation and left-wing partisanship: the two paths to welfare building in the Italian regions.- Chapter 3. The (re)emergence and strengthening of the centre-periphery cleavage in Italy: (old and new) regionalist parties and sub-state welfare building (1980-2010).- Chapter 4. Class mobilisation and regional welfare building: the peculiar case of the Italian Left.- Chapter 5. Spain: Regional welfare building and the tensions between territorial and class mobilisations.- Chapter 6. Territorial mobilisation and regional welfare governance in Spain: ethno-regionalist parties and ‘sub-state’ nation building.- Chapter 7. The Spanish Left: statewide political dominance and the regional challenge.- Chapter 8. Devolution, the territorialisation of party politics and the transformation of welfare governance in Great Britain.- Chapter 9. Scotland: where territorial politics and social democracy meet.- Chapter 10. Wales: finding the balance between social democratic consensus and a strengthening regional identity.- Chapter 11. Comparative Conclusions.- Primary Sources and References.- Index.

“Vampa's book remains a very persuasive effort to measure and explain the interesting phenomenon of the regionalization (or de-nationalization) of welfare systems, by linking politics with policy. It will be of interest to scholars of comparative politics, as well as of public policy and administration. In addition, the study also raises questions on the changing meaning of social citizenship in contemporary states, providing empirical evidence which calls for (normative) theoretical reflections.” (Emanuele Massetti, Public Administration, 2017)