From Ideology to Policy: Nativism, Producerism, and Authoritarianism in the Welfare Politics of Lega and PiS

This thesis investigates how populist radical-right parties in Europe translate their ideological principles into welfare governance. Focusing on Italy’s Lega and Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS)—selected through a most-different-systems design—it asks how nativism, producerism, and authoritarianism are operationalised in social policy and whether these interventions mark a rupture or a recalibration of Europe’s welfare states. Drawing on qualitative analysis of party manifestos, policy documents, and welfare legislation, the study applies the CARIN deservingness framework (Control, Attitude, Reciprocity, Identity, Need) to reveal how populist ideology structures inclusion and exclusion within welfare institutions. The findings indicate that both parties follow a pattern of bounded expansion—a form of welfare growth that extends coverage while simultaneously tightening the moral and political criteria of inclusion. Lega enacts territorial exclusion, equating solidarity with citizenship and legality, while PiS promotes moral inclusion, linking benefits to virtue, family responsibility, and productive contribution. Across both cases, social protection becomes a tool of moral and national boundary-making rather than egalitarian redistribution. The thesis conceptualises this configuration as an emergent pattern of illiberal welfare governance, in which solidarity is re-coded through morality and belonging. It advances welfare-state theory by extending CARIN from attitudinal to institutional analysis and by identifying welfare chauvinism as a form of moral governance (Mudde & Kaltwasser 2017; Abts et al. 2021). Ultimately, it demonstrates that the populist radical right does not dismantle the welfare state but repurposes it, transforming social protection into a moral economy of loyalty, virtue, and national identity.