Book review: Advanced Introduction to Social Policy

AuthorVarvara Lalioti
Published date01 September 2017
Date01 September 2017
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/1388262717729583
Author biography
Rita Pires received her PhD in the field of International Tax Law from NOVA Law School. She is
currently a Professor at NOVA Law School, where she teaches Social Law, Public Finance, Tax
Law, and International Tax Law. She also conducts research on those subjects, coordinating a
Research Group (iLab: Laboratory of Ideas on Social Innovation in Public Finances, Taxation,
Social Security and Social Economy), which promotes the integration of social security, taxation,
public finances, and social economy.
Daniel Be
´land and Rianne Mahon (2016). Advanced Introduction to Social Policy, Cheltenham,
UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 160 pages, ISBN: 978 1 78347 802 6 (hardcover).
Reviewed by: Varvara Lalioti, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences
DOI: 10.1177/1388262717729583
Just what are the new social, economic, political and theoretical challenges that call into question
the traditional assumptions that social policy should address? Without rejecting the insights found
in the traditional social policy canon, this question is at the centre of Be´land and Mahon’s 2016
book. As the authors state in the introduction, the book ‘draws on both classic and contemporary
theories and concepts to shed light on the broad processes ...that are putting pressure on existing
social policy arrangements and raising new research questions’ (p. 1). These processes include the
shift to post-industrial socio-economic structures and globalisation. Other key themes of the book
are changing gender relations and their social policy implications, the increasing salience of ethnic/
racial/linguistic diversity, and the growing importance of the Global South for social policy
innovation. Emphasis is also placed on the need to pay more attention to the role of ideas in
shaping social policy and the role of tran snational actors, especially in esta blishing what the
authors call ‘a global social policy architecture’.
The book is divided into eight chapters. Chapter 1 describes (and pays tribute to) the
contributions of Polanyi, Durkheim, Titmuss, and Marshall to our understanding of t he emer-
gence of social policy within the context of the pressures associated with the transition to
capitalist/industrial societies. Concepts such as market capitalism and laissez-faire, solidarity,
occupational and fiscal welfare, and social citizenship are located at the centre of the authors’
analysis. Each of the four subsections on these concepts is lar gely devoted to one of the authors
mentioned above: market capitalism and laissez-faire to Polanyi; solidarity to Durkheim; and
so on. Be´land and Mahon acknowledge the value of early scholarship for social policy analysis,
as well as the fact that the issues discussed in this chapter remain central to contemporary
social policy debates. Nonetheless, they also underscore how this early scholarship neglected
important issues, such as gender, immigration, ethnicity and race, decentralisation and feder-
alism, and only pay limited attention to explaining differences among countries in terms of
social provision.
Chapter 2 is devoted to explaining social policy development. Special attention is paid to a
series of theoretical perspectives, namely industrialism, national values, power resources, business
power and historical institutionalism. Although the authors acknowledge the importance of classic
284 European Journal of Social Security 19(3)

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