Dragos Adascalitei

Book Review: Social Policy in Challenging Times: Economic Crisis and Welfare Systems:

This book edited by Farnsworth and Irving is an informative contribution to the understanding of the implications of the recent economic crisis on national social policy systems. Its main message is that in order to fully comprehend the nature of the post2007 policy shifts we have to unpack the international crisis into a series of national variations that depend on the historical record of each country and the way in which national actors chose to defend their economies. The extent of the welfare state transformation is thus conditioned both by the objective reality of the international system and by its political interpretation at the national level. Welfare reforms are possible, but their logic and motivation are likely to differ from one context to another. The book is structured in two parts. The first part provides an introduction to the political and economic consequences of the recent crisis. In chapter two, Michael Hill asks whether the crisis provoked a paradigm shift in economic policy and argues that at least until now we are not witnessing one. The chapter also exposes the limits of a ‘paradigm shift’ type of analysis that requires interpretation after the event and makes it difficult to understand present changes through such a lens. In chapter three, Ian Gough argues that the economic crash has provoked a fiscal crisis of the state that has significant consequences for the welfare sector. The next chapter, by Adrian Sinfield, explores the social costs linked with a growth model based on financial markets and deregulation. The following two chapters describe the international dynamics of the crisis in terms of ideas (Bob Deacon) and the north–south divide (Armado Barrientons). The former makes a strong case for careful consideration of social assistance programmes in developing countries. While the crisis is likely to spark a series of short-term emergency responses through the expansion of some social assistance programmes, there are concerns that these will not address the protracted causes of poverty. The second part is an unsystematic selection of national accounts that seek to probe the diversity welfare responses in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Chapters seven and eight analyse the social policy responses in South Korea and China, respectively. While chapter seven concentrates more on the changes produced by the 1997 Asian financial crisis on South Korea’s welfare policies, in chapter eight we are brought back to present and confronted with a map of social policy changes in China since 2007. Chapters nine to eleven cover the cases of Germany, Ireland and Iceland, respectively. From the German case we learn that welfare changes began well before the current economic crisis, while evidence from the Irish case suggests that the crisis reinforced pre-existent economic thinking based on neo-liberal globalization and welfare retrenchment. In line with previous studies on small economies, the chapter on Iceland reveals that ‘size matters in the development of the welfare state’. The contribution by Pekka Kosonen in chapter eleven contrasts the ‘homemade’ crisis of the 1990s in Denmark, Finland and Sweden with the recent global downturn. His contribution underlines that the welfare responses to the previous crises conditioned how these countries reacted to the present one. The two final country chapters explore the politics of crisis in US, Canada and the UK. The comparison between the US and Canada reveals that the crisis had a much deeper impact on the latter’s 456332 ESP22510.1177/0958928712456332Journal of European Social PolicyBook Reviews 2012