Italian Labour Market Reforms before the Global Financial Crisis: From the Perspectives of the EU, Partisanship, and Democracy

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15H06683
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: Politics
• Research Institution: Waseda University
• Principal Investigator: Honda Asako 早稲田大学, 政治経済学術院, 助手 (40756079)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-08-28 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 比較政治学 / 公共政策 / ヨーロッパ福祉改革 / イタリア福祉改革

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This research aims at analysing welfare reforms in European countries in the 2000s from the point of view of the EU’s effects and partisanship in Member States. In other words, I explored ‘why the EU was important in right-wing governments’ reforms in some instances’, and focused on the strength of the EU’s effects on Member States to answer this question. Moreover, I offered my hypothesis - in welfare policy fields both ‘more and less affected by the EU’, right-wing governments in Member States implemented ‘flexible’ reforms based on the ‘coordination’ policymaking style - , and by focusing on the employment, unemployment benefit, and pension reforms of the second Berlusconi centre-right government in Italy, concluded that this hypothesis was relevant.

Free Research Field

政治学