THE WITHERING OF THE WELFARE STATE: REGRESSION ‐ edited by J. Connelly and J. Hayward
| Published date | 01 March 2013 |
| Date | 01 March 2013 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2012.02111.x |
| Author | Martin Powell |
REVIEWS 247
THE WITHERING OF THE WELFARE STATE: REGRESSION
J. Connelly and J. Hayward (eds)
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 232 pp., £57.50 (hb), ISBN: 9780230337145
Contributors to this volume are current or former members of the Department of Politics
and International Studies at the University of Hull, which celebrated its 50th anniversary
in 2011–12. This text appears to be the book of the conference. Given the background and
title, I was expecting either a ‘political science’ approach to the welfare state or a focus
on welfare state retrenchment, but the book appears to be neither. For retrenchment, I
would have expected much more engagement with the leading contributor in the field
(Pierson 1994). For a political approach to the welfare state, I would have expected much
greater use of probably the best and the best known contribution in the field (Pierson
2006). However, both are cited once in different chapters. This is not quite Hamlet without
the Prince, although he only makes a very brief appearance on stage.
The book consists of 13 chapters organized in four parts (public intervention: the roles of
state and society; vicissitudes of democratic institutions and processes; intrusive national
and international market forces; and the residual warfare state). I am not convinced of
the ‘fit’ of some of the chapters with the parts. It is unclear why the terms ‘withering’ or
‘regression’ were chosen from the multitude of those available (Powell and Hewitt 2002)
as they were not defined, and there was little discussion of alternative terms. Neither was
there much discussion of the post-(Paul) Pierson literature on welfare state retrenchment.
However, the book did introduce the new term of a ‘welfaring state’ (p. 208).
Many individual chapters were well written and interesting, but I found limited
coherence in terms of either retrenchment or political approaches. It was not clear to me
why subjects such as constitutions, defence, and the environment feature in a book on
the welfare state. The bulk of the book focused on the UK experience, although other
countries are discussed in chapters, and there is one chapter on welfare in Brazil.
Given my interests, I found Chapters 1–4 and 6 of greatest value from a social policy
perspective. These provided an interesting and less usual blend of political science,
social policy, and history perspectives, but I would take issue with some of the claims
made. For example, Noel O’Sullivan writes that a defining characteristic of the British
welfare state was its reliance on a dogmatic faith in the efficiency of centralization –
Public Administration Vol. 91, No. 1, 2013 (232–250)
©2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
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