Book Review: Agents of the Welfare State: How Caseworkers Respond to Need in the United States, Germany and Sweden
| Date | 01 December 2007 |
| Published date | 01 December 2007 |
| DOI | 10.1177/138826270700900406 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Book Reviews
390 Intersentia
him to overstate (or under-analyse) the EU’s inuence on national policy ma king.
For example, a theme that is promi nent in the nal part is Eichenhofer’s vision of the
EU as a principal driver in the modernisat ion of national socia l policy, emphasising
its economically ‘productive’ role over its compensatory functions. While I agree
with this overal l characteris ation of t he policy direction i n recent yea rs, I feel that
such a proposition would have be en more persuasive if it had been supported by
some discussion of competing theories which suggest that factors ot her than the EU
might have exer ted more inuence on domestic welfare reform. More generally, a nd
probably reect ing the author’s socio-legal and historical academ ic perspective, the
aspect of social p olicy as a political battleground remains somewhat neg lected or
implicit throughout.
Perhaps such crit icism is misplaced since the book does not aim to be analytica l
in a strict sense but, as the author points out, is intended to be an introductory text
on European social policy. It is certainly highly v aluable for newcomers and students
interested in the emergence of national social policy in Europe as well as the changing
role of the EU. It is refresh ingly positive in its approach and a truly European tex t
in t hat it incorporates ideas and ideals express ed by writers from severa l European
countries in dierent centuries, thereby h ighlighting national distinctiveness as well
as common European origi ns and aspirations.
Jochen Clasen
University of Edinburgh
Christopher Jewell, Agent s of the Welfare State: How Ca seworkers Respond to Need
in the United States, Germany and Sweden, Ba singstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 20 07,
xvi + 246 pp., ISBN: 978–1-4039– 8411–1
Not content with the kind of knowledge pouri ng from comparative grand-scale
multinational studies on the welf are state, co-authored by dierent country ex perts,
Christopher Jewell sets out to perform a street-level, in-depth, selective cross-national
comparative study on t he practises of case workers. e t ask chosen is surrounded
by methodological challenges and theoretica l complexities, and, as Jewell also notes,
oen avoided. ere was a gap to be lled and Jewell’s book Agents of the Welfare State
is there to prove that this ty pe of study is not only possible, but also worthwhile.
e book will nd its readers mainly among the broad disciplina ry eld of welfare
state researchers. e tone is academ ic and the results presented are the outcome of a
long-term research project. Origi nally the material for a PhD dis sertation, it has now
been transformed into a book .
e main theme running through the th ree case studies is how the organisation of
welfare states aects t he work performed by caseworkers involved in socia l assistance
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