Comparing the Development of Unemployment Benefits in Italy and Germany

This paper confronts the trajectories of unemployment compensation in Italy and Germany, paying particular attention to the differentiation of social rights in this field. In its beginnings and up to the time of fascism these trajectories have been relatively similar in the two countries. It was only during the so-called Golden Age of welfare state expansion that the two systems diverged clearly, leading to high fragmentation and wide generosity differences in the Italian unemployment benefit system and a more contained three-tier stratification in Germany. In the 1990s, however, reforms in Italy have tended to reduce the segmentation between benefit schemes, whereas in Germany this segmentation has been sharpened: first incrementally (1980s and 1990s) then in more fundamental reforms (beginning of 2000s). Finally, the paper indicates how (next to other possible factors) the different structures of party competition in the two countries have shaped the two different trajectories.