THE EFFECTS OF GOVERNMENT SATISFACTION AND POLITICAL TRUST ON ATTITUDES TOWARDS SOCIAL INVESTMENT: EVIDENCE FROM POLICY AND FISCAL TRADE-OFFS IN ITALY

This thesis investigates the effects of government satisfaction and political trust on public attitudes towards the ‘social investment’ state in Italy. In the thirty years following the Second World War, advanced industrial economies established the welfare state to protect (male) breadwinners against income loss due to old age, disability, sickness, or unemployment. However, since the post-war years, the structure of social risks has changed dramatically. The dilemmas of modern societies comprise long-term unemployment, in-work poverty, precarious jobs, single parenthood, and a growing difficulty in reconciling work and family life. These challenges have called for a recalibration of the traditional welfare state towards a ‘social investment’ model focused on the generation, preservation, and mobilisation of human capital. However, welfare state recalibration remains, for some countries more than others, an arduous challenge. Welfare state institutions successfully adapted to the...Show moreThis thesis investigates the effects of government satisfaction and political trust on public attitudes towards the ‘social investment’ state in Italy. In the thirty years following the Second World War, advanced industrial economies established the welfare state to protect (male) breadwinners against income loss due to old age, disability, sickness, or unemployment. However, since the post-war years, the structure of social risks has changed dramatically. The dilemmas of modern societies comprise long-term unemployment, in-work poverty, precarious jobs, single parenthood, and a growing difficulty in reconciling work and family life. These challenges have called for a recalibration of the traditional welfare state towards a ‘social investment’ model focused on the generation, preservation, and mobilisation of human capital. However, welfare state recalibration remains, for some countries more than others, an arduous challenge. Welfare state institutions successfully adapted to the emergence of new social risks in the Nordic countries, but not in Southern Europe, still lagging behind. Why has it been so difficult for some welfare states to implement future-oriented strategies? Under which conditions would citizens be willing to accept welfare state modernisation based on social investment measures? Focusing on the Italian case, this thesis argues that a recalibration towards future-oriented reforms is complicated by the low levels of political trust that characterise the Italian welfare regime. Relying on micro-level data from the eight wave of the European Social Survey (ESS), the empirical analysis investigates the effects of governmental trust and satisfaction on the willingness of Italian citizens to support recalibration towards social investment, financed through retrenchment of existing social benefits or tax hikes. The evidence confirms that trust and satisfaction encourage the disposition of Italians to support investment-based reforms that are costly in action at present, with uncertain future outcomes. Overall, these findings suggest that governments’ trustworthiness broadens our understanding of the political viability of future-oriented policymaking under financially constrained scenarios.Show less

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THE EFFECTS OF GOVERNMENT SATISFACTION AND POLITICAL TRUST ON ATTITUDES TOWARDS SOCIAL INVESTMENT: EVIDENCE FROM POLICY AND FISCAL TRADE-OFFS IN ITALY