Is Flexicurity Exportable? The Case of Denmark and Italy

- 1 - Introduction In the last months, flexicurity became more and more a fashionable topic despite the fact that the successful experiences of some countries in managing labour markets have been there for some time. An interesting paper (Keune and Jepsen 2007) argues that the reason why the Commission expressed so much interest is that this “magic word” is a very effective way to summarize the ideas of the European Employment Strategy, the Lisbon Strategy and even more general the European Social Model. The word expresses very well the concept of European market economy compared to the capitalisme sauvage of the other side of the Atlantic, as it combines the idea of flexibility and security, competitiveness and social cohesion. Furthermore, it is perfectly coherent with the role of the Commission as disseminator of best practices and broker among different interests. As we will see, the Commission has been advocating a better balance between flexibility and security since the beginning of the EES, however only now and under the name of flexicurity it was able to attract the attention and the consensus of all the other institutions and governments. Academics, instead, can be divided into three groups. The first is made of “flex- enthusiastic” that look at the system as a “third way” in labour market regulation and a model for other countries in need of structural reforms. The second group is composed by researchers and scholars who appreciate it but consider national specificities and institutional arrangements too important and too different from country to country to allow a learning process. Finally, the third group includes the “flex-sceptics” underlying that the system has its own problems, such as low employment rates for people at the margin of society, immigrants for instance, and high costs. This thesis will not question the model, taking for granted that flexicurity is a positive experience, and wonder whether it could be replicated in Italy, a country that has not so many things in common with Denmark. To answer this question, I will start by contextualising the two countries within the broader literature of welfare regimes and reviewing papers and books that constitute the milestones of this branch of social sciences. In primis Esping- Andersen as he was the first, in 1990, to provide a solid classification of welfare state regimes going beyond the quantitative dimensions of the simple spending on social policy and comparing how countries score on two qualitative variables: (a)