Abstract

During the last decade, the study of long-term care policies (Ltc) has attracted increasing attention in the comparative welfare state literature, according to several reforms implemented by European countries in order to cope with a growing social demand in a context of budget constraints. With the presentation and discussion of two recent books that dealt with Ltc from a different disciplinary background (The long-term care policies in Europe, edited by Ranci and Pavolini, 2011; The user co-payment in services for disabled and elderly people, edited by Gioncada et al., 2011), the article describes the main characteristics of the Italian case in a comparative perspective and suggests new research hypotheses from an explanatory point of view.