Book Review: Geschichte des Sozialstaats in Europa. Von der ‘sozialen Frage’ bis zur Globalisierung
| Author | Jochen Clasen |
| DOI | 10.1177/138826270700900405 |
| Published date | 01 December 2007 |
| Date | 01 December 2007 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
European Jour nal of Social Secu rity, Volume 9 (2007), No. 4 389
BOOK REVIEWS
Eberhard Eichenhofer, Geschichte des Sozialstaats in Europa. Von der ‘sozialen Frage’
bis zur Globalisie rung, Munich, C.H. Beck, 20 07, 219 pp., ISBN: 978–3406–547898
Published in Germa n, this book is something of a r arity. Its title translates as Histor y
of the welfare state in Europe. From the ‘social question’ to globalisation, which, is rather
grand and a mbitious, but also quite apt. Wh ile introductory in overal l character, the
book goes beyond many of the c onventional overviews of social policy in Europe,
which tend to concentrate on one particular countr y, describe the familia r territory of
typologies of welfare states or focus on the European Union and its ‘social dimension’.
Strongly anchored in historical contexts, this book manages to combine all of these
perspectives, and does so ver y well. Divided into ve parts, the rst par t is devoted to
showing common historical origi ns of early public interventions aimed at supporting
the poor across dierent regions in Europe, with the church, cities, local authorities
and, later, nation states as the main actors. Mak ing use of relevant literature from
several Europe an countries, Eichenhofer demonst rates similarities in origins across,
as well as specic directions within, national developments. e second part completes
this discu ssion with an account of the emergence and charac teristic features of
social policy arrangements in Britain, the Nordic countr ies and continental Europe
(with separ ate sections on Germany, France, Italy, as well as the Aust ro-Hungarian
Monarchy and its successor states).
In these two par ts the author points to historical ins tances of international policy
coordination that in uenced domestic social p olicy formation. is i nterest in the
internationalisat ion of social p olicy, dating back to well before the creation of the
European single ma rket, becomes the central concern of the t hird part. Dealing w ith
the genesis of social Europe and the ‘Europeanisation’ of social policy since the 1950s,
the author c hronologically describes major EU social p olicy interventions, and then
goes on to disc uss the various mechan isms, policy instruments and areas of socia l
policy t hat have been i ncreasingly employed by or inuenced by t he EU. Reviewing
ve decades of policy cha nges, Eichenhofer detect s a process of policy convergence,
which he rega rds as transform ing (and ultimately overt aking) national social policy
making. is process i s welcomed both as an ex pression of growing European
political integration, a necessary c omplement to economic harmonisation, and as a
trend towards the completion of a trans-national European social model. e author’s
stance as a ‘Euro opti mist’ is increasingly evident here, at times perhaps tempting
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