Book Review: Rules of Relief: Institutions of Social Security and Their Impact
| Published date | 01 June 2010 |
| Date | 01 June 2010 |
| Author | Michael Kpessa |
| DOI | 10.1177/138826271001200206 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
McColgan’s thoughtful piece about the opportunities, or lack thereof, for EU law
to assist in the tricky question of conflicts between freedom of religion and rights
to non-discrimination, especially on grounds of sex and gender, are both strong
contributions.
The richness of the individual contributions is the main strength of the book.
Its main weakness is that it struggles at times to express a coherent message, or set
of inter-related messages. The editors seek to rectify this in their introduction, but
the extent to which this is feasible is hampered by the very different methodological
starting points of the different contributors. one aspect of this is that the chapters in
the early part of the book assume an unbridgeable division between ‘economic’ and
‘social’, i.e. between markets and welfare. The later chapters take a different approach,
focusing (not always explicitly) on their inter-connected nature, and the scope for
EU law as a site for the re-articulation of welfare values. This is very much a lawyers’
book – it is written by and for lawyers – and it assumes the centrality of law as a
device for achieving and/or explaining social change. It assumes that the texts of the
law (which are discussed in great detail in the book) make important differences to
social practices. These are assumptions with which those from different disciplinary
backgrounds may disagree, but there is much of interest here for legal scholars and
those from other disciplines with an interest in ‘Social Europe’.
REFERENCES
Polanyi, k. (1944) The Great Transformation, Boston: Beacon Press.
Scharpf, F. (2002) ‘The European Social Model. Coping with the Challenges of
Diversity’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 40 (4), 645–70.
tamara Hervey
University of Sheffield
J.C. vrooman, Rules of Relief: Institutions of Social Security and Their Impact,
The Hague, The netherlands Institute for social Research, 2009, 542 pp., IsBn
978-90-3770-218-7
Rules of Relief provides an interesting and thought-provoking analysis of the origin,
emergence and development of social security institutions as well as their impact on
modern societies. In this study, Vrooman argues that modern social security institutions
have their roots in institutional norms constructed by...
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