The Political Economy of European Welfare Capitalism By

Readers will have high expectations of this book: Mark Blyth’s endorsement on the back cover heralds it as the 2010’s answer to Esping-Andersen (1990) and Hall and Soskice (2001). The authors’ aim is to re-examine some key ideas and assumptions (or perhaps ‘myths’) about the development of welfare states in order to test the ‘conventional narrative’ (p. 2) that romanticizes the 1940s, privileges ‘crisis’ as the catalyst for change and assumes a race to neoliberalism at least, if not the bottom. To undertake their task of reassessment, the book is divided into seven chapters, covering historical development, the varieties of capitalism/welfare regimes framework, globalization, competitiveness, European integration, the question of welfare state convergence and, lastly, the impact of the 2007–08 financial crisis. In addressing these themes, each chapter presents a highly engaging and clearly written mix of summary, possibility, data and analysis, such that even those most well versed in the chapter specialisms remain likely to learn something new. The subjects of interrogation in the individual chapters may not be novel, and likewise the conclusions drawn, but as the authors stress, the empirical basis of what we think we know about the life and times of the welfare state is often shakier than we presume. Discussion of the reality and numerical accuracy of ‘three worlds of welfare’ (Chapter 2) for example, is a familiar enterprise, generative of a wealth of cross-national insight. Hay’s and Wincott’s contribution here: that what exist are ‘clusters’ rather than ‘worlds’, formed according to (two) dimensions rather than distinct models of welfare, suggests that the shared qualities of modern welfare states are more preponderant than the factors of difference. Interestingly, although the representation of the two-dimensional clustering for the 2000s throws up some thought-provoking (Belgium), though perhaps not entirely surprising (Denmark) movement (p. 61), by the time convergence is discussed in Chapter 6, the clusters have reverted to divisions of European geography. Having concluded Chapter 2 with a preference for clusters not types, the following two chapters examine the threat to welfare state viability posed by its representation as an economic burden. First, by assessing evidence for the more general capital-repellent qualities of taxation in the context of globalised markets (Chapter 3), and then in more detail (Chapter 4) the evidence of retrenchment that has already taken place and the arguments that support it. SOCIAL POLICY & ADMINISTRATION ISSN 0144–5596 DOI: 10.1111/spol.12043 VOL. 47, NO. 7, DECEMBER 2013, PP. 846–856