The regionalization or decentralization of welfare policies is a process common to all European countries, though they have taken different paths and had strikingly different effects. In Italy they have been accompanied for years by the emergence of strong internal discrepancies in the quantity of services and in the performance of local institutions. The article deals with these questions on the basis of three analytical dimensions: first, the quality of the regional and local supply networks; secondly, the characteristics of social needs and demand that emerge in the different regions; and lastly, the nature of the historically-determined relations between the centre of the political administrative system and the various local levels involved in the supply of social service
