Perceived efficacy of welfare services has never been studied among the variables that determine attitudes toward welfare state reform. Are citizens more prone to accept social expenditure cuts, tax cuts or privatization reforms in welfare programmes when they perceive those programmes as ineffective? With the aim of answering this question, the Spanish case is explored using a 2005 survey carried out by the Spanish Centre for Sociological Research (CIS) and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). The article analyses citizen attitudes toward four welfare policy areas: health, education, pensions and unemployment protection, and toward the reforms that could be made in them. The results question the usual contention of politicians and practitioners who often suggest that citizens who perceive public services as ineffective would prefer lower public expenditure and taxes to purchase some welfare services in a more effective private sector. Points for practitioners The findings of the article have implications for decision-makers committed to public service reforms. Our results contradict the contention that in recent years western citizens' attitudes in support of a powerful welfare state are less enthusiastic than they were in the past. At least in some countries, it can be said that the poor performance of welfare programmes perceived by citizens does not necessarily lead them to espouse privatization. Most citizens think that the inefficacy of welfare services is due to their lack of resources and they seem to be inclined to support the improvement and increase of investment in the public services instead of other existing alternatives. Public managers may utilize these findings as a basis for demanding additional resources, but this strategy should not lead them to neglect their striving for more efficient provision of services, since citizens' attitudes may change if inefficacy is prolonged.

This paper analyses public support for government spending on science and technology (S&T) and its determinants. It constructs hypotheses based on previous findings from two streams of research: public preferences for government spending and public understanding of science. Using data from a large national survey in Spain, it develops multivariate models to test the relevance of various predictors of public support for government spending on S&T. Findings identify several variables that are clear and consistent predictors of public support for government spending on science and technology: the respondent's educational level, interest and participation in science, knowledge of science, and positive values and views of science and technology. However, the effects of other variables also related with general attitudes toward science are less clearly associated with support for government spending on S&T.

The Italian and Spanish healthcare systems are ranked among the best in the world, according to the Lancet Ranking and the Global Health Security Index ( 2019). Yet Italy and Spain were the first European countries hit by the coronavirus and did not have the benefit of hindsight and policy learning. A further complication for crisis management and associated policy measures to be adopted and implemented was the highly decentralized policy system. The article analyzes the main policy responses by national governments in Italy and Spain, focusing on their innovative character and on the coordination challenge of these measures for central-regional multilevel governance. The findings suggest that central governments assuming emergency powers need to balance more carefully their policy decisions against the constitutional shared responsibilities acquired by regional governments in highly decentralized policy systems.

Decentralisation was one of the most relevant trends in the institutional development of the Spanish and Italian welfare states up to the onset of the economic crisis. The present article tries to answer two questions. How have central government – subnational government relationships and models of welfare governance evolved? What has happened to territorial inequalities in access to welfare state provision before and after the onset of the crisis and the introduction of austerity policies?. Before the crisis, territorial differences in the operation of the welfare state across regions were more pronounced and intense in Italy than in Spain. With the onset of the crisis and austerity, the differences between territorial clusters in Spain have remained relatively stable or have decreased, whereas in Italy they have often increased. In both cases, regional governments have, in recent years, been more dependent on central government. In fact, to receive support or extra funding, regional governments have accepted the conditions imposed by central government. Sub-national governments have been forced to accept significant cuts and greater control or supervision of their budgets. As the largest part of the regional budget is spent on social policies, regional welfare systems have inevitably been affected both in scope and in the way in which decisions are made.