Crisis As Marketization: Social Policy In Southern Europe (2008-2013)

The marketization of social policy as evidence of a larger paradigm shift is especially evident than in austerity-ridden eurozone countries. Ireland, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain are comparable in that a short-term, large-scale change in social policy is currently being undertaken. With the significant exception of Italy, all cases have entered the eurozone as relatively recent cohesion countries with specific welfare models that did not fit neatly into traditional categories advanced in the welfare state literature. Recently, they have arguably entered a path-dependent process of convergence towards marketized social policy. The introduction of market mechanisms in benefits provision, healthcare, education and housing has driven protest and initial evidence suggests that marketization in these contexts is producing new cleavages while reinforcing gaps which had seemingly disappeared. These countries, where unequal social relations were the norm for most of their modern histories, now face an externally-induced push towards marketized social policy without accompanying compensation mechanisms, such as strong civil society participation rates and institutionalized conflict procedures.

In this paper, we test this convergence hypothesis by tracing social policy orientations and transitions in the context of larger institutional change. As these countries now face critical junctures, they are important test cases on the impact of external shocks to domestic social policy and the consequences of pushing market mechanisms into welfare provision in the context of unpredictability in political and economic outcomes.