European Integration and National Social Citizenship : Changing Boundaries, New Structuring?

The deepening of European integration has weakened the traditional coercive monopoly of the state on actors and resources that are crucial for the stability of redistributive institutions, The article explores these issues adopting a "state-building" perspective and drawing on Stein Rokkan's pioneering insights on boundary building and internal structuring. The first part of the article briefly presents the theoretical perspective. The second part sketches the development of national welfare institutions up to the early 1970s, underlining the importance of bounding processes. The third part describes the challenges recently emerged to the "social sovereignty" of the nation-state largely linked to European integration. The final part offers some more speculative remarks on the changing architecture of social protection, with some hints at cross-national variations and possible developments at the European Union level.