LIBRI DI PIERPAOLO DONATI

The essay develops the general issue of new styles of welfare policies with reference to the specific field of family policing. According to the author, we are witnessing today an increasing failure of the dominant model of family policy, which he calls the lib-lab configuration, based upon a compromise between liberties (guaranteed in the market) and social control (run by the state). This model meets new limits and shortcomings due to the lack of social subjectivity recognized to the family as such. The author claims that a new configuration of social policies is trying to emerge, which can be described and interpreted in terms of a relational change (in the light of his relational theory of society). Such a change aims at replacing the lib-lab socio-systemic engineering centered on the freedom-control link with a form of social integration which favours innovation through arrangements characterized by associationalism and welfare pluralism. These new styles are best suited to the increasing complexity of family policies, for the simple reason that they present the considerable advantage to promote more activism and social participation on the part of the family life-worlds.

The Italian National Health Care System was created in 1978 on a strong govern-mental basis and, a long series of reforms nothwistanding, it still bears that kind of bias. Health services and policies in Italy continue to refer to a centralistic and wel-farist culture, largely dependent upon state intervention. The first part of the essay describes the main features of the Italian National Health System as it has been de-veloped in the last few years, showing that its shortcomings are due to the limits of its structural configuration. In the second part of the essay, the author claims that these limits emerge from an overarching political orientation which he calls "lib-lab policies". In the concluding remarks, the author proposes to reorganize the health sevices and policies in the light of what he calls "welfare pluralism", i.e. building the health system upon three autonomous, interlinked and interchanging sectors (state, market, third sector organizations). This new model, called "societal welfare mix" based upon a societal (not nation-state) citizenship, is seen in oppo-sition to the lib-lab mainstream model.