Welfare state and platform workers’ protection: The role of government ideology in France and Italy

The digitalisation of work is having far-reaching consequences for welfare states. In particular, the social protection implications of platform work have been heatedly debated. The question of whether platform workers should qualify as employees or freelancers has been especially politically salient in that the employment status largely determines access to social protection. Surprisingly, comparative welfare state scholarship has remained silent on the matter. In a context of marked politicisation of platform work, how did government partisanship influence legislative responses to platform work? What do different legislations imply for platform workers’ social protection? Drawing on literature on government ideology in social policymaking, I address these questions by comparing the politics of platform workers’ social protection in France and Italy, which present similar welfare state architectures and labour market structures. Methodologically, I rely on 22 semi-structured interviews with policymakers and experts involved in legislative processes on the employment status. I triangulate interview data with policy documents and newspaper articles. My findings show that partisanship matters through government ideology in the regulation of platform workers’ social protection. While the French government followed a ‘liberalising’ approach, the overall Italian trajectory presented more ‘interventionist’ traits. The centrality of government ideology, developed within party structures quite regardless of voter preferences, calls for a more extensive consideration of agential factors driving political parties and governments. More broadly, this paper also sheds light on how welfare politics is re-discussing the foundations of welfare states at a time when digitalisation is rapidly changing the world of work.