Professor Davide Orsitto was invited to present his book Varieties of Equality in European Welfare States: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Redistribution (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024) at a public event at the LSE European Institute in London on January 28. Orsitto, Class of 2016, is a government official at the Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers and Lecturer in Political Science at John Cabot University. He will be in discussion with Professor Stefan Collignon (London School of Economics) and Professor Minna van Gerven (Helsinki University) on the theme of equality welfare states in today’s changing geopolitical landscape.
The book examines how different European societies define and pursue equality in three main distinct conceptual ways. These theoretical differences trace their roots in different philosophical thinking (John Rawls, Amartya Sen, Friederik Von Hayek) and translate into different policy approaches and value choices that are measured in the book. The event will move beyond the European focus of the book to reflect on current geopolitical fragmentation, global excess imbalances, macroeconomic uncertainty, and the emergence of a more multipolar world. The panel will consider what these shifts imply for redistribution, social rights, and the future of the welfare state.
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In November of 2024, Orsitto delivered a keynote presentation of his book’s findings at John Cabot University moderated by Professors Silvia Scarpa and Michael Driessen, showing how individualist societies, chosen among 22 states members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), are on average associated with higher income redistributive efficiency. In particular, he noted that “the observed relationship calls for further exploration of the apparent paradox: societies that prioritize individual rights over collective well-being seem to be more efficient in income redistribution.”
Davide Orsitto, who started teaching at JCU in 2025, is from Frascati, Italy. In 2016, he completed his Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs with a minor in Economics and Finance at John Cabot University in Rome. In 2018, he obtained his master’s degree in International Security Studies at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, and the University of Trento, Trento. He studied abroad at Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne and interned at the Italian Mission to the OECD in Paris. As a graduate student, he worked for Baker Hues, a GE Company in Florence, as a data analyst in the economics and marketing department. He obtained his PhD cum laude in Human Rights and Global Politics at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in 2023 with a thesis on the construction of political and economic indicators to discuss changes in welfare state systems and the future of the Social Europe. He worked for more than three and a half years at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers for the Italian Recovery Plan and for the Council of Ministers. He is now serving as a trade policy official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome.
