Spanish and Regional Welfare Systems: Policy Innovation and Multi-level Governance

The debate about the relationship between decentralization and equity has been intensifying in Europe and other parts of the world. In Spain, this debate has been alive over the past thirty years since the transition to democracy, as long as decentralization started and developed hand in hand with the construction of the welfare state. The question is what decentralization represents for the Spanish welfare system as a whole, or how future developments in this decentralized scenario condition the welfare role of the state. In this article we will analyse how devolution has resulted in different welfare policy options taken by the governments of the 17 Autonomous Communities, and how the emergence of different territorial welfare regimes has coexisted with a common structure of social benefits and rights for the state territory. We will also show how citizens' perceptions on the evolution of inequalities across territories do not fit the data available on the strong redistribution effect of state policies.