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. Vampäs 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. 

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.

Introduction.- Chapter 1. Theoretical Framework, Research Hypotheses, Case Selection and Methodology.- Chapter 2. Italy. Territorial mobilisation and left-wing partisanship: the two paths to welfare building in the Italian regions.- Chapter 3. The (re)emergence and strengthening of the centre-periphery cleavage in Italy: (old and new) regionalist parties and sub-state welfare building (1980-2010).- Chapter 4. Class mobilisation and regional welfare building: the peculiar case of the Italian Left.- Chapter 5. Spain: Regional welfare building and the tensions between territorial and class mobilisations.- Chapter 6. Territorial mobilisation and regional welfare governance in Spain: ethno-regionalist parties and 'sub-state' nation building.- Chapter 7. The Spanish Left: statewide political dominance and the regional challenge.- Chapter 8. Devolution, the territorialisation of party politics and the transformation of welfare governance in Great Britain.- Chapter 9. Scotland: where territorial politics and social democracy meet.- Chapter 10. Wales: finding the balance between social democratic consensus and a strengthening regional identity.- Chapter 11. Comparative Conclusions.- Primary Sources and References.- Index.