Abstract

Is it possible to speak of a South-European welfare model? This issue has been discussed for several years by several scholars dealing with welfare systems in comparative perspective. In general there are two prevailing answers to this question: the first one focused on the evaluation of quantitative aspects of national welfare states and the other one arguing for the importance of qualitative elements and aimed at highlighting some "Latin" peculiarities arising from the analysis of institutional features of welfare systems. The goal of this paper is to combine these different approaches by integrating a multi-varied regression analysis on the weak effectiveness of social expenditure with empirical data connected to the "ambivalent delegacy", which is typical of South-European policies against poverty.