Book Review: Administering Welfare Reform: International Transformations in Welfare Governance
| Author | Hartley Dean |
| DOI | 10.1177/138826270600800408 |
| Published date | 01 December 2006 |
| Date | 01 December 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Book Reviews
European Jour nal of Social Sec urity, Volume 8 (2006), No. 4 411
systems. O’Donoghue’s chapter is probably the one that best deals with these issues.
Despite these few points, the book is a good piece of work, which is interesting f rom
both an empirical and methodological point of view, and should be considered by
specialists i n pension policy, at the academic as well as at the policy-making le vel.
Camila Arza
European Un iversity Institute
Florence
Paul Henman and Menno Fenger (eds.), Administering Welfare Reform: International
Transformations in Welfare Governance, Bristol, e Policy Press, 2006, xiii +
287 pp., ISBN 1-86134-652-2
Admini stration may be rega rded by some as a dull a nd dusty aspect of social secur ity
provision. And yet anyone who knows any thing about the practica l realities of social
security w ill be aware that how socia l security polic y is delivered can be just as, or even
more, important than how it is made. ere is a wealth of critica l literature relating
to the shi from bureau-professional to managerial-contractualist modes of human
service provision, but the speci c implications of that shi for social security/cash
transfer provision have, relatively speaking, been strangely neglected. Henman and
Fenger’s edited collection, Administering Welfare Reform, is a welcome attempt to ll
that gap. Like many edited collections, the book was born out of a conference; more
speci cal ly, s ome themed sessions on ‘Welfare reform in internat ional perspective’ at
the International Sociological Congress of 2002. e eclectic nature of the o ering,
as ever, is both a weakness a nd a strength: on t he one hand, individua l chapters spill
over into substantive discus sions of, for example, labour market s, the voluntary/non-
governmental sector and more general social policy issues and o en lack a unifying
focus; on the other hand, the collection is an excellent example of inter-disciplinary
enterprise and comparative schola rship. It is a very useful book.
e book sets out to show “t he e ects of the implementation of both ‘governance’
and ‘New Public Management’ (NPM) principles, which have highly in uenced
welfare administration since the 1990s, in recon guring the nature and experience
of welfare claimants, welfare sta and welfare agencies” (p. 257). It consists of
twelve chapters: the rst a general introduction by both editors; the second an
erudite scene-setting chapter by Paul Henman in which he introduces a Foucault-
inspired governmentality framework which, though it does not directly inform the
later substantive chapters, o ers a theoretical context. e remaining chapters are
organised in three sections. e rst section is concerned with participants in the
reform process and includes contributed chapters on state -voluntary sec tor compacts
(in UK, France, Canada and Quebec); the organisation of active labour market
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