Rescue from Without? Italian Social Policies 1970-1999 and the Challenges of Internationalization.

The turbolent 1990s have been a successful decade for Italy. Through an impressive sequence of reforms, this country has been able to put in order its battered public finances, to start an incisive modernization of its backward bureaucratic apparatus, its rigid labour market and its unbalanced welfare state, without seriously jeopardizing social peace not the overall competitiveness of its economy in the global context. The dynamics of internationalization and, especially, or European integration have been crucial for fostering these positive developments.