The Lisbon Agenda is now history. The EU's ten-year experiment to make Europe a knowledge-based society and co-ordinate social policy in the Member States in that image ended in 2010. At present, the prospects for a continuation of EU engagement with social policy on the scale of Lisbon are distinctly unfavourable. Therefore it is timely to review its intricacies and to probe the strengths and weaknesses of the Lisbon Strategy from a social policy perspective.

Armstrong's book cuts a swathe through a complex field and is a welcome contribution to a body of literature that is, in my view anyway, often over complicated and quite self-serving. His book has two stated aims: to give an explicitly European dimension to the discussion of social exclusion; to analyse developments through a governance lens. One could add a third: to accord social policy a more active and explanatory role in the shaping of EU governance. The latter takes on a special significance in a field where the term ‘social policy’ is used very loosely and where texts using that title regularly range as widely as employment policy and industrial relations. The core arguments of the book revolve around the tensions and difficulties for the EU in trying to put into effect a process and policy agenda around poverty and social exclusion. Overall, the book is a detailed and penetrating account of how key EU actors used the Lisbon Agenda to put in place a multi-level and innovative system of governance designed to get Member States to engage in policy analysis and exchange so as to modernise their social policy models and approaches.

It will be obvious that governance is a leading concept in Armstrong's analysis; indeed here lies one of the signature contributions of the book. Matters of political competence, procedure and technique have a significance at the EU level considerably beyond their import at national level. They constitute also one of the great learning opportunities in studying the Lisbon Strategy. For Lisbon was highly innovative when it came to governance, inventing new structures and processes focused on exchange of good practice, learning and critical reflection. Rather than by imposing change through coercion, Member States were invited to open up their decision making and policy systems to a range of influences from both within and without the state.

But Armstrong does not allow governance to over-shadow social policy. He recognises that another novelty of Lisbon was its attempt to put substance on the concept of social exclusion, up to then a very general idea and discourse of social ills. The fact that it is in many ways a case study of social exclusion makes Armstrong's book extremely relevant to a social policy audience. But there are other things here also for the student of social policy – Armstrong's approach and way of thinking merge social, political and legal factors. He draws his analytical framework from social policy, sociology, political science and law. Interweaving insights from each (for this reader in a relatively seamless way), Armstrong produces an analysis that demonstrates how the framing of social exclusion and other key ideas was critical to the process.

The book consists of eight chapters. The first provides the reader with the background information and concepts needed to understand the field. Among the perspectives it discusses are Europeanisation, governance, institutionalism and institutionalisation. This chapter also introduces different discourses on social ex/inclusion. Chapter 2 focuses on the open method of co-ordination, the EU's distinctive process of policy co-ordination. It applies a critical lens to the background to and meaning of policy co-ordination in the EU in the social field, and then examines the utility of policy co-ordination as a mechanism of domestic adaptation in the social sphere. The third chapter turns to the evolution of social policy in the initial phases of activity under Lisbon, and the fourth covers the period after the so-called relaunch of the Lisbon Strategy (from 2005 onwards). Together these two chapters provide the reader with the key emphases of and changes in EU social ex/inclusion policy and relevant governance mechanism over the course of Lisbon, using a framework which links together constitutional, policy and governance elements. The next chapter turns from the EU level to examine the penetration of EU ideas, policies and processes at national level. This is considered in terms of the mechanisms of change involved in the EU approach to policy reform (covering politics, policy and polity) and then empirically through a case study of how the UK has responded to the open method of co-ordination.

Chapter 6 takes a legal turn and explores the effects and constraints imposed by EU economic law (free movement and competition law) on social policy-making capacity at Member State level. This offers a nuanced account of the intricate ways in which EU economic law interacts with national social policy. The next chapter is also legal in focus, exploring the capacity for constitutional reform (through the Lisbon Treaty) to provide the foundation for greater European governance in the social field. In the final chapter, the author looks to the future – the post Lisbon period, and considers how different elements established under Lisbon and the Open Method of Co-ordination might be taken forward. This chapter is strong at identifying how the resources, institutions and governance techniques bequeathed by the Lisbon Strategy and the Open Method of Co-ordination can be harnessed.

I see Armstrong's main contribution in the analytical framework which he develops and applies. What this book offers existing scholarship above all is a coherent framework to conceive of and understand the last ten years of EU engagement with social policy. It should therefore prove a classic in the field. Compared to existing work, Armstrong's book ranks highly, and I would recommend it because it provides a clear, critical and readable account of the most recent developments in EU social policy and offers progressive proposals for the future. As far as I am concerned, this is the book if one wants to know how the EU developed its social policy approach to poverty and social exclusion over the ten fateful years of the Lisbon Strategy.