Book Review: European Welfare States: Comparative Perspectives
| Date | 01 June 2006 |
| Published date | 01 June 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1177/138826270600800207 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
arrest its further development. Whether the process is evolutionary or modernising in
character would, therefore, at this stage appear irrelevant.
Liana Giorgi
The Interdisciplinary Centre for Comparative Research in the Social Sciences
Vienna
Mel Cousins, European Welfare States: Comparative perspectives, London, Sage,
2005, viii + 257 pp., ISBN 1-4129-0173-1
The overall aim of Cousins’ book is to ‘provide an up-to-date and comparative
analysis of European Welfare States’: music to the ears of those involved in teaching
and studying European Social Policy. It covers three main topics: theories about
welfare states; description and comparative analysis of typologies and country cases;
and discussion of challenges and future policy options. Covering this breadth of
material provides the author with a challenging agenda but one worth pursuing as it
offers the reader the opportunity of gaining an overview of the key issues relating to
European Welfare States in one readily accessible volume.
An informative introductory chapter sets the context for the analysis by providing
helpful definitions and explanations of key concepts such as ‘the welfare state’ and
‘Europeanization’. The author also presents an interesting discussion of the why and
how of comparative analysis and the place of quantitative and qualitative methods.
Although it becomes clear from this that the author is a firm believer in the merits of
comparative research, he offers a brief critique of the prevailing quantitati ve methods
generally adopted by comparative researchers in this area and presents some
alternative approaches, including the use of fuzzy sets.
Following the introductory chapter, the book is divided into three parts: Part 1 sets
out a number of theoretical perspectives on welfare states; Part 2 presents comparisons
of European Welfare States; and Part 3 looks to the future. Part 1 starts off with a brief
review of the key theses on the welfare state and developments of these theoretical
perspectives, with a particularly useful section on the return of structural theories. It
then moves on to look at ‘seven theses on globalisation’ which provide a wide-ranging
commentary on the diverse views on this contested topic. This part of the book ends
with a chapter on gender and welfare which draws the readers’ attention to existing
theses presented in the literature and current themes including gender mainstreaming.
Part 2 begins with a review of the development of welfare state groupings starting
with the 19
th
century. It uses conventional measures of income, expenditure,
industrialisation, trade union density and the left voting to track patterns of
convergence and growth. Cousins makes use of the Social Citizenship Indicators
Project (SCIP) to provide data for this section of the book but some further
Book Reviews
European Journal of Social Security, Volume 8 (2006), No. 2 219
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