This volume brings together a series of essays that address the question of the configuration of welfare systems after 1945. The authors herein examine not only the role the war played in the transformation and implementation of social policies - which has been explored in the historiography for many other European areas - but also the complex of cultural, political and legal influences that helped orient such processes. The focus is mainly on the Italian experience, which is nevertheless analysed with regard to the transnational dimension of dialogue between models and chronologies, also relevant in determining the different weight attributed, across welfare systems, to private and public subjects.