MAURIZIO FERRERA 

Modelli universalistici e modelli occupazionali:

 la divaricazione originaria fra Welfare States

N. 163

Summary — In the formative period of the Western welfare state (1880-1920) two distinct models of social insurance emerged: the universalistic model, in which social rights are based on citizenship and the occupational model, in which social rights are based on labour market participation The first model is centred on a single risk community coterminous with the political community; the second model is characterized by the presence of a number of distinct risk communities, corresponding to different professional groups. What causal constellations oriented the various countries towards the adoption of the universalistic or the occupation model? This article presents a heuristic scheme aimed at identifying these causal constellations The scheme is based on the notion of "reformist sequence" and emphasises three sets of factors: socio-economic factors (the occupational structure), institutional factors (the policy legacy, organizational and intellectual predispositions) and political factors (the dynamics of party competition). The scheme is then applied to explain the actual welfare "path" of a selected number of countries, typically representing the universalistic and the occupational model.