Abstract
Daniel Béland’s book provides the reader with a compact introduction to social policy in five substantive chapters, bookended by introductory and concluding sections. Unusually for a textbook on this topic, and one source of its considerable appeal, its main focus is on the United States.
For Béland, social policy has a two-fold meaning: it is understood both in terms of social programmes that have aims such as tackling poverty and social exclusion, promoting citizenship, and lessening market dependency (even though some of these programmes may in practice impact adversely on class, gender or racial inequalities), and in terms of the academic discipline(s) that studies these. He distinguishes, in Chapter 1, between different types of social programmes and different policy areas, within the wider context of issues such as citizenship and inclusion, solidarity, de-commodification, risk pooling and economic insecurity. A broad classification of programmes into social assistance, social insurance, and universal transfers and services is proposed, on the basis of different kinds of benefits and financing pertaining to each. The five social policy areas examined are work, unemployment and welfare; health; housing; pensions; and ‘family benefits’.
Social policy differences between the US and other economically developed countries are explored in Chapter 2 which includes a clear discussion of the strengths and limitations of Esping-Andersen’s ‘welfare regime’ typology as a tool to understand the ‘division of labour’ between states, markets and families, and the role of private benefits in liberal welfare regimes. It includes an insightful discussion of the varied implications of the US federal system for social policy, such as the impacts of economic and fiscal competition between states on social expenditures, and the greater potential for policy experimentation and diffusion that such a decentralized structure allows.
Chapter 3 adopts a chronological approach, providing a whistle-stop tour of the emergence and development of social policy in the US, taking in the emergence of social insurance for worker compensation, the increase in social spending under the New Deal, the post-war expansion of existing programmes, such as old age insurance, and the creation of new ones, such as disability insurance, through the War on Poverty and up to the stagflation of the mid-1970s. Béland then expertly and even-handedly summarizes the main sociological and political science explanations of these developments and of cross-national differences.
The contemporary politics and challenges of the welfare state, involving retrenchment and restructuring of social programmes, feature in the penultimate chapter. The appeal of politicians espousing market liberalist critiques of the welfare state is discussed, and an informative and very topical discussion of Paul Pierson’s writings on retrenchment follows. The author also stresses the contradictory tendencies exhibited by welfare state restructuring, citing research on continuing differences between policy areas and programmes. He strikes a note of caution in coming down too heavily on one side or another of the convergence vs. continuing diversity debates, allowing for some cross-national convergence in particular policy areas while seeking to explain enduring regime or state differences.
The fifth and final substantive chapter discusses the ‘looming challenges’ facing the welfare state. Béland focuses on changes in family structure, increasing employment precarity, and population ageing, health care coverage and expenditure, and the relation between democracy and inequalities in the areas of class, ‘race’ and gender. This leads to a discussion of the constraints posed by globalization in meeting these challenges.
Two suggestions might be made for a second edition: a more detailed ‘Contents’ would assist the reader in navigating the text, and discussion of the social constructionist perspective on social issues might also be incorporated.
Nevertheless, What is Social Policy? successfully manages to convey the complexity of social policy analysis in an introductory volume. Throughout Béland illustrates the roles of social policy with practical examples, such as social insurance for someone who finds themselves unemployed, or the way that public pension provision has created the institution of retirement. Additionally, the public role of social policy as an academic discipline contributing to debates on the future of the welfare state is emphasized throughout. In short, the book can be heartily recommended for undergraduate readers and for the politically and socially engaged general reader.