Book Review: Ideas and welfare state reform in Western Europe (editado por Peter Taylor-Gooby, Plagrave Macmillan, 2005)

ARZA, CAMILA

Journal of Social Policy

Cambridge University Press

Lugar: Cambridge; Año: 2006

0047-2794

The article reviews the book edited by Peter Taylor-Gooby, and titled Ideas and welfare state reform in Western Europe. It comments how the book frames the analysis of welfare reform into the normative domain of discourses and policy paradigms that have sustained and promoted the recasting of welfare systems in Western Europe. It discusses how ideas on policy-making are brought back on stage as key elements to legitimise the policy choices adopted in each particular time and country. The article comments on each specific chapter, showing how the individual contributors to the book provide comparative analysis of welfare reform in some of the most relevant social sectors. In the selection of cases, the review points out a slight bias towards labour market policy and the omission of healthcare, but celebrates the truly comparative cross-country approach which is sustained across chapters. Overall, the review considers the book as much more than a simple description of institutional changes: it also provides an empirically based analysis of the normative aspects that underlie these changes - this is pointed out as its main distinctive feature.