Abstract

After more than 10 years since the onset of the economic and financial crisis of 2008, there is a broad scientific debate on the analysis of a new model of capitalist accumulation built on the processes of financialisation of the economy, a model that is interpreted as an evolution of post-industrial capitalism, i.e. as financial capitalism. If we start from the consideration that the institutional patterns and the effects of welfare models and industrial relations are the product of the transformations of the capitalist models of organisation of production and of work organisation, the question arises as to how the development, consolidation, and subsequent crisis of financial capitalism have impacted on such contexts. What type of institutional patterns and social effects have emerged in relation to protection and social security? And what about the key factors ensuring the stability of a capitalist type of welfare in the framework of a financialised economy? This paper tries to answer these theoretical questions by providing an analytical framework and by identifying the mechanisms and constitutive variables of the new social security system that characterises the era of financial capitalism.