COMPARATIVE POLITICAL ECONOMY AND SOCIAL POLICY

Detailed Course Content

• Regulation Systems and Models of Capitalism

  The course will examine the main features of the sociological analysis of economic phenomena and of the main differences in the organization of the capitalist system between convergence and diversity through the conceptual and analytical categories of economic sociology and in particular of comparative political economy.

• Rules and regulation in Social Policy

  The course aims to offer the basis for interpreting the analytical and methodological features, goals and results produced by social policies. The course, firstly introduces the basic concepts and approaches used in the field of social policies and gradually provides tools and methods for the comparative analysis in the various “social” fields. At the end of the second module, the student will be able to analyse the different "Welfare systems", their origin, the kind of data and of sources useful to understand the empirical and programmatic implications of the different regimes.

• Comparative Analysis of Labour Policies

  The course aims at providing students with the theoretical and methodological basis for the analysis of labour policies (models, features, objectives, effects). From this point of view, the comparative perspective used aspires to interpret the labour policies as a social construction situated in different contexts of space and time.

• Legal culture and comparative Social Policy

  The course aims to offer a perspective of investigation in the field of social policy, of the organizational structures, the role of street-level bureaucracy and of legal culture in the comparison between the various social policies. The module aims to clarify the role of law in the provision of welfare services and formulate hypotheses for its reconstruction and analysis in the different welfare systems. At the end of the course, students should able to observe the processes of legal formalization in social policy and to reconstruct the possible effects on a social phenomenon.

Textbook Information

• Regulation Systems and Models of Capitalism

  Trigilia, Economic Sociology, Routledge, 2002.

  Crouch, Capitalist diversity and change, Oxford UP, 2005.

  Hancke, Debating Varieties of Capitalism, Oxford UP, 2009.

• Rules and regulation in Social Policy

  J. Baldock, L. Mitton, N. Manning, S. Vickerstaff (eds) Social Policy Oxford, University Press, 2012 chap. 1, 3, 17, 18, 20

   

  Readings:

  Pierson and Castels The welfare state Reader, G. Esping-Andersen “Three worlds of welfare capitalism”

  Castels, Leibfried, Lewis, Obinger, Pierson (eds) The Oxford Handbook of The welfare state, chap. 39 “Models of welfare” pp. 569-583

• Comparative Analysis of Labour Policies

  Berton, Richiardi, Sacchi, The Political Economy of WorkSecurity and Flexibility, Chicago U.P., 2012.

  Clasen, Clegg, Regulating the Risk of Unemployment, Oxford University Press, 2013.

  De Beer, Schils, The Labour Market Triangle, Edward Elgar, 2009

• Legal culture and comparative Social Policy

  Cotterell “The concept of legal culture” and L. Friedman “A Reply” in D. Nelken Comparing legal culture chapt. I e II pp. 13-39
  M. Lipsky Street Level Bureaucracy “Introduction”
  Consoli T. (ed) Migration Towards Southern Europe. The case of Sicily and the Separated Children chap. 1 and 2, pag. 7-55