Book review: La Sécurité Sociale: Universalité et Modernité, Approche de Droit Comparé
| Author | Marta Coimbra |
| DOI | 10.1177/1388262720965590 |
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Book review
Book review
Isabelle Daugareilh and Maryse Badel, La S´
ecurit´
e Sociale: Universalit´
e et Modernit´
e, Approche de Droit
Compar´
e, 2019, Edition A., Paris: Pedone, 575 pages, ISBN 9782233009180 (paperback).
Reviewed by: Marta Coimbra ,Assistant Professor at Faculty of Law, University of Coimbra, Portugal
DOI: 10.1177/1388262720965590
The book La Securit´
e Sociale: Universalit´
e et Modernit´
eprovides a wide perspective on social
security issues globally. It contains various essays by different authors, gathering international
contributions on the topic of social security to present an important discussion to the academic
community. Under the direction of Isabelle Daugareilh and Maryse Badel, it aggregates the work
of more than 40 social security experts from all over the world. The book comprises 36 chapters
and is structured into three main parts.
The ultimate goal of the book is to enhance our understanding of social security systems, from
their origins to their contemporary forms. The book aims to provide a clear picture of the roots of
social security systems, their diffe rent structures and their implicati ons, namely the currently
debated issues and the future challenges of these systems. Besides the historical view, it also offers
a worldwide perspective, with detailed references to 19 countries (and two more regions – Central
America and Latin America) and an important overview of the French social security system.
Additionally, it is important to emphasize that this work is not limited to one field of knowledge.
The book adopts a multi-disciplinary approach, examining social security issues from a variety of
views, highlighting the perspectives of law, history and political philosophy.
The editors open with an introductory, contextual chapter which outlines the methodology and
briefly explains the main points of each chapter. In following the book’s structure, they go on to
describe the origins of the idea of ‘social security’ and to present the diversity of social security
models. At the end of the introduction, the editors present the debate surrounding these models’
contemporary challenges, which sets off a web of discussions running through various chapters.
The book is divided into three main parts. Throughout the first part, a historical overview is
presented, from the beginnings of social security to the period of the 2nd World War. The chapter
starts by enunciating the political roots of the concept to explain how the general idea of guaran-
teed protection against social risks developed. On one hand, the focus is on the French case. France
is used as an archetypal example for this approach because of it being an enduring European
democracy, with a long history in the field of battling social risks. On the other hand, special
attention is paid to those countries that were the leading pioneers in the inception of social security:
Germany and the United Kingdom. Moreover, great emphasis is placed on analyzing the two main
European Journal of Social Security
2020, Vol. 22(4) 505–507
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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