The chapter examines the Italian system for the provision of social services, by taking into account its historical development, its defining features and those factors that are contributing to reshape its structure. As for the latter, particular attention is devoted to the federalist reform and...

In this paper, the relationship between the degree of centralisation and the distributive outcomes in European schemes of social assistance is investigated. For this purpose, a scheme of classification suitable for grouping the EU15 schemes except for Luxembourg according to features related to...