Book Review: The Boundaries of Welfare: European Integration and the New Spatial Politics of Social Protection
| Author | Paula Blomqvist |
| DOI | 10.1177/138826270600800406 |
| Date | 01 December 2006 |
| Published date | 01 December 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Book Reviews
European Jour nal of Social Sec urity, Volume 8 (2006), No. 4 403
Maurizio Ferrera, e Boundaries of Welfare: European Integration and the New
Spatial Politics of Social Protection, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 20 05, 320 pp.,
ISBN 0-19-928467-9
e transformation of European welfare states under the pressures of economic and
political integration in the region constitutes a new and important area of social
research. So far, many of the stud ies undertaken in the area have had a predomi nantly
empirical bias, desc ribing evolving EU policies in va rious elds and t heir e ects at the
domestic level of policy-maki ng. While descriptive empirical s tudies are a signi cant
component of investigation in this area, the emerging research eld of European
social policy has called out for more over-arching frameworks of interpretation and
the development of theoretical tool s to analyse the tran sforming processes under way.
It is thus very gratifying to receive Maurizio Ferrera’s new book e Boundaries of
Welfare , which is an attempt at creating ex actly such a framework.
e questions asked in the bo ok are not new, but the answers are, par ticularly the
way they are theoretic ally framed. Fer rera’s notion of a new ‘spatial’ polit ics of welfare,
where location plays an increasingly important role, provides a new perspective on
how actors in the socia l eld identify a nd pursue their interests. e concept of spatial
politics comes from Stein Rokkan, whose work constitutes the basis of Ferrera’s
theoretical f ramework, but which has been re-constructed by h im and others (see, in
particula r Flora et al. 19991) and adapted to the conditions of contemporary Europe an
welfare politics. Two main research questions guide the book. e rst is to what
extent European integration has served to alter the boundaries of national welfare
states. e second is whether and how t his in turn has a ected the politics of welfare
in the region, and what new forms of re-d istributive arrangements are c urrently being
created. e answers indicate that European integration indeed serves to undermine
national systems of social protection and that this in turn provokes defensive
responses from domestic policy actors as well as new forms of political action. e
weakening of the pre-existing boundaries of national welfare states is manifested in
that EU members no lon ger have the power to rest rict acc ess to soci al bene ts to their
own citizens, and t hat the traditional link b etween social rights and nationa l territory
has become looser. e main cause of t his development is Regulation 1408/71 and the
way it has been interpreted in t he context of the inner market by the European C ourt
of Justice (ECJ). Ferrera notes: “ ank s to the principles of bene t commutability and
exportability, national welfare states now must let in and out of their borders entire
‘bundles of entitlements’: import of entitlements matured u nder foreign schemes (as in the
case of cla ims for the reco gnition of contr ibutions paid abro ad) or exports of e ntitlements to
be redee med in foreig n territor ies (as in the c ase of pay ments abroad)” (p.2 07). In a ddit ion
1 Flora, P., Kuhnle, S. a nd Urwin, D. (eds.) (1999), State Formation, Nation Building and Mass Politics
in Europe: e eory of Stein Rokk an, Oxford: OUP.
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