Institute of European Studies

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 stability of redistributive institutions. The article explores these issues adopting a Rokkanian perspective, i.e. building on Rokkan’s pioneering insights on the nexus between boundary building and internal structuring.

The first part of the paper briefly presents the theoretical perspective. The second part sketches the development of national welfare institutions from their origin up to the early 1970s, discussing their implications in terms of boundary building and internal structuring. The third part describes the challenges that have emerged in the last couple of decades to the “social sovereignty” of the nation state: challenges that are largely linked to the process of European integration, but that are partly reinforced by endogenous developments as well. The final part offers some more speculative remarks of the potential de-structuring of the traditional architecture of social protection, with some hints at cross-national variations and possible developments at the EU level.