Overview
- Offers the first cross-country comparative study on the regional welfare systems of Italy, Spain and Great Britain
- Fits into an emerging theme in Comparative Politics: the territorial dimension of welfare
- Contributes to a stream of research which is still rather fragmented, exploratory and often based on country-specific and mainly qualitative analysis
Part of the book series: Comparative Territorial Politics (COMPTPOL)
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Table of contents (12 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book is a study of the increasing territorial variations in the development of sub-national welfare systems that have occurred as an effect of the decentralization of health care and social assistance policies in Italy, Spain and Great Britain. The author examines the political factors that underlie these variations by combining cross-regional and cross-country comparisons using mixed methods. Vampa’s main finding is that regionalist parties have played a key role in sub-national welfare building and have used social policy to strengthen their legitimacy in the political struggle against central authorities. In this context, functional political competition between Left and Right has been partly replaced by territorial competition between Centre and Periphery as the main determinant of social policy making. Additionally, mainstream left-wing parties have been torn between maintaining territorial uniformity in social protection and responding to demands for more extensive socialservices tailored to the needs and preferences of specific regional communities. This book will be of use to academics and policy makers interested in political economy, devolution/decentralisation, welfare, and party politics.
Reviews
“Davide Vampa’s book provides a fine analysis of the political factors that have shaped variation in regional welfare development in Italy, Spain and Great Britain - three countries that belong to competitive regionalised systems. The analytical framework is simple and elegant. It uses a small number of well-defined factors and provides a neat configurational model for explaining outcomes in the evolution of sub-national welfare systems. Using mixed methods, Vampa provides a careful analysis of the effects of territorial and left wing mobilizations on welfare development.” (Professor Laszlo Bruszt, Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy)
“Davide Vampa’s book shows deep understanding of the cases studied, high standards of both qualitative and quantitative analysis and familiarity with the comparative method and its potential for drawing generalizable findings in the social sciences. The extensive research carried out is digested and presented in a structured way which leads coherently to a well-articulated conclusion.” (Associate Professor Jonathan Hopkin, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
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.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Regional Politics of Welfare in Italy, Spain and Great Britain
Authors: Davide Vampa
Series Title: Comparative Territorial Politics
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39007-9
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-39006-2Published: 27 September 2016
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-81791-0Published: 14 June 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-39007-9Published: 15 September 2016
Series ISSN: 2947-8162
Series E-ISSN: 2947-8170
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVI, 259
Number of Illustrations: 12 b/w illustrations, 7 illustrations in colour
Topics: Comparative Politics, European Politics, Public Policy