The paper constitutes the first detailed comparative study of Southern health care systems. It begins by analysing the reforms they underwent during the seventies and eighties, that is, the introduction of national health services in Italy, Portugal, Greece, and Spain. The second section of the...

The paper redresses an imbalance in the study of the welfare state: the comparative neglect of health care programmes as sources of evidence about the changing politics of the welfare state. It explains why health care should be central to our understanding of the welfare state; summarises the...

Welfare state policies in the health sector centred on medical care and cost containment. The AIDS epidemic challenged the central position of the medical model and introduced new public policies at the periphery of the welfare state, in the field of prevention and public health management. The...

This paper is a step towards an explanation of the redistributive impact of ruling parties. It proposes a new theoretical interpretation regarding some changes in the social security systemt that could have affected inequality trends in Britain in the 1980s. I control the validity of this...