Book Review: Unwrapping the European Social Model
| Author | Mel Cousins |
| DOI | 10.1177/138826270600800409 |
| Published date | 01 December 2006 |
| Date | 01 December 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Book Reviews
European Jour nal of Social Sec urity, Volume 8 (2006), No. 4 413
or non-governmental sector in welfare ad ministration on the other. However the book
is also to be commended:
• for bringing together an i nteresting and informative set of papers, t hat draws very
helpfully on a range of parallel and intersecting literatures and genuinely spans
both the global a nd the local;
• for attempting a systematic treatment of the complex and o en contradictory
issues entailed by the reform of wel fare governance (while rightly eschew ing overly
simplistic overarching na rratives);
• for seeking to open up a theoretical debate ab out welfare admin istration in terms
that are relevant to schol ars of social security prov ision.
Hartley Dea n
London School of Econo mics and Political Science
Maria Jepsen and A. Serrano Pascual, Unwrapping the European Social Model,
Bristol, e Polic y Press, 2006, 260 pp., ISBN 1-86134-798-7
In recent years, there have been a plethora of edited studies concerning aspects of
the welfare state and social policy. In principle, such an approach o ers a range of
advantages. It can bring together experts from di erent disciplines and di erent
countries and ass emble a range of expertise which can be matche d by few individua l
authors. Indeed, some such edited volumes have achieved classic status in the area of
welfare state stud ies.1 All too o en, however, such studie s turn out to be a somewhat
disparate collect ion of chapters loosely connected to the mai n theme of the publication.
Unfortunately, despite several attract ive aspects, this book tends to show more of the
weaknesses t han the positive aspects of such stud ies.
e book is based on a project co-ordinate d by the European Trade Union Institute
which brought together experts from di erent countries and di erent disciplines
(including sociology, political science, economics, and labour market studies) to
examine and re ect on the concept of the European social model (ESM). In their
introductory chapter, the editors arg ue that the concept of the European socia l model
has become ‘a key notion in political and scienti c debates on social responses to
globalisation’. However, as they point out, the concept is both ‘ highly ambiguous and
polysemous’. In an interesting chapter the ed itors trace the di erent approaches and
understandings of t he ESM. ey identi ed three main conceptions of the ESM. e
rst sees the ESM as re ecting common features and values shared by EU member
1 e prime example i s, of course, Flora and Heide nheimer’s Development of Welfare Sta tes in Europe
and America.
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