Ricerc@Sapienza

This special issue of «Contemporanea: Rivista di storia dell’800 e del ’900», dedi-
cated to the relationship between war and welfare, was completed while the Covid-19
pandemic was invading the lives of tens of millions of people around the world, rap-
idly changing their lifestyles, priorities, and expectations about the future. The very
concepts of safety and risk – concepts that have always been entwined with any the-
oretical reflection on the welfare state, as well as on its concrete practices – were
radically affected.

European welfare states are characterized by a different amount of resources devoted to social policies,
despite an ongoing convergence of national policies. The Public Choice literature and some empirical analysis on the
efficiency of the public sector point out that higher levels of government spending are often related to greater
inefficiencies. Can this relationship be considered general? What does it emerge from the empirical analysis of social

Based on the construction of two indicators to assess the relative
effectiveness and efficiency of European welfare policies, we show that the
variability of efficiency cannot be explained only by the amount of resources
devoted to social policies but also by the institutional environment. The OLS
regression shows that institutional variables- such as accountability and
honesty of public officials- have high significant effects on the efficiency.

The essay will retrace some of the fundamental steps concerning the development of the Italian welfare state during the years of Fascism, framing them within the most recent historiographical debate as well as in the context of some national and international issues.