Since 2012, the topic of human rights in Russia has commanded a great deal of attention. Recent illiberal legislation has undermined citizens’ rights, and the NGOs who would defend those rights find themselves increasingly beleaguered.

Eleanor Bindman's new book makes a welcome intervention into this terrain, tackling this topic from an important angle. Bindman's focus is on the status of social rights in Russia—rights to housing, health, and social security—that have attracted less attention. Bindman traces construction and contestation about social rights in Russia in the post-Soviet period, presenting qualitative data from interviews with those who defend and contest them: NGO staff, Ombudsmen, and academics. Her study (based on research undertaken 2011–16) brings us to the post–2012 moment, offering compelling insights about Russia's current welfare politics and state-societal relations in the third Putin administration.

One of the book's points of departure is the downgrading of social rights within the international “hierarchy” of human rights norms. The first chapters account for this. Bindman offers a “brief history” of the emergence of social rights, their post-war consolidation and institutionalization via European welfare states and international human rights conventions. Special attention is afforded to the erosion of the post-WW2 consensus—what Nancy Fraser flagged as the shift from “redistribution” to “recognition” in the post-Cold War era—and the rise of neoliberal policies, which enabled this “downgrading” to come to pass.

Ably marshalling extant scholarship, Bindman sketches the contradictory and complex Russian welfare system that took form in this context and the rights contestation that accompanied it. The “monetizing” social welfare reforms of 2005—and the roiling protests that greeted them—marked a pivotal moment. Bindman shows that, despite the Putin administration's declarations about social rights and seeming embrace of a “statist” social welfare policy in the protests’ aftermath, neoliberalizing trends have consolidated. The welfare regime that has taken shape in the post-2012 period is a “mixed model” of neoliberal and state-centered, paternalistic elements, one that varies widely on the regional level (57). It relies increasingly upon civic groups and NGOs, in line with broader European trends in the austerity period.

One important finding she presents us with is that social rights matter. Despite the self-responsibilizing logics sometimes expressed by her NGO staff interviewees, social rights continue to animate them. Moreover, the issues that propel citizens to consult with Ombudsmen, and which motivate Ombudsmen and NGOs alike are social: “everyday” problems, such as housing and health, which are widely perceived to be prior to “abstract” ideas like political or civic rights.

Bindman focuses her discussion on socially-oriented NGOs (SONGOS)–the organizations focusing on “everyday” problems, such as housing and health, that are most directly concerned with social rights, social welfare, and their provision. Less controversial than their “rights defense” peers, these organizations have thrived in recent years, benefitting from the new infrastructure of state support. Sidestepping the negative assessments that tend to prevail about them (as “apolitical” or state coopted, somehow lesser than rights-defense NGOs), Bindman shows us something different. Her interview data reveal them to be a realm of contention, where some NGO workers are committed to their independence, wary of the state and its motives and deeply resistant to further formalizing their relationship with it. Indeed, empowered under a “hybrid” field of welfare policy, the staffs of SONGOS experience a surprisingly high degree of agency and some independence also. Furthermore, the pragmatic approach they embrace enables them to make effective interventions in policy discussions.

Bindman's study affords an interesting perspective on the topic of state-societal relations in the post-2012 period. Her conclusion is that the relationship between the Russian state and these socially-oriented NGOS is more “complex, nuanced and mutually constitutive” than most studies suggest (124). Indeed, overturning our notions, she suggests the state may need SONGOs more than SONGOs need the state. There's a whisper of a suggestion that this reliance, combined with the Putin administration's emphasis on social rights might have the unintended effect of stimulating the grassroots movements it most fears.

While I might have wished for more texture from the interview data she collected, Bindman offers plenty that is good to think. This well-conceptualized and neatly organized book makes valuable contributions to comparative scholarship on welfare regimes and social rights. It will be of interest to students of NGOs and civil society, as well as to those interested in exploring the intricacies of neoliberal logics in postsocialist and authoritarian contexts.