Towards a New “Social Pact”: World War II and Social Policy in Great Britain, Italy and Vichy France = Vers un nouveau « pacte social » : la Deuxième Guerre mondiale et les politiques sociales en Grande-Bretagne, Italie et dans l’État français

The PhD dissertation concerns the social policies in Great Britain, Vichy France and Fascist Italy during World War II. This work, however, takes into account the path dependences and policy legacies, and opens up to the further developments of the immediate postwar years. The expansion of compulsory schemes, healthcare and other social provisions is an incremental process, but WWII provided the trigger for a qualitative leap in the political goals and extent of public social policy. The dissertation studies the policy convergences and the ideological divergences in tackling the issue of public social protection in the three countries. The British universalistic reforms reformulated the “social pact” around the enhancement of the rights of citizenship, strengthening the bonds of social solidarity thanks to the mediation of the State. The coeval proposals in Fascist Italy and in Vichy France opted for different approaches. In Italy, the regime tried to pass a set of provisions to redefine the industrial relations and the income distribution. The Vichy’s ruling classes, instead, tried to recast a corporative order, spreading “occupational solidarity” in each industrial branch. In all these countries there was no consensus on detailed policies, while the common ground was the strengthening of the compulsory insurances; the administrative unification and rationalization; the incorporation of the social welfare as a core State policy area; the overcoming of the social unrest and social question through the establishment of links of solidarity among the members of the national communities. The “total war” triggered social change due to domestic stabilization and to the ideological content of WWII. The promotion of social enhancement for a “better future” was a key point of propaganda. In Britain, the social plans were a tool to re-assert the role of the country as a leader in the postwar settlement. The military victory of the Allies made possible the spreading of social security. The British universalistic model did not become a model in the Continent, but its core principles fueled the postwar debates and plans of social reforms. The study shows the intermingling of different processes at the root of the shift from the “social insurances” to the “social security” during and after WWII. On the one hand, some political principles and administrative practices gradually emerged, irrespective of the different political regimes and levels of industrialization. On the other, WWII brought about two different views concerning the goals and the role of the social protection in the modern societies.