It has been quipped that one of the last bastions of British Empire has been the introductory social policy textbook and that might have been so: until now. Daniel Béland has finally breached that bastion with a book written expressly for students in the United States. The declared goal of What is Social Policy? is to ‘increase [US readers’] awareness of the political nature of the welfare state and the forms of inequality and insecurity it can fight’ (p. 155). It is largely because the teaching of social policy, as a discrete academic subject, first emerged and has been preserved in Britain that even the best introductory texts, however hard they try not to be, have tended to be at least a little bit UK-centric. Béland's is unapologetically US centred (although the author himself is a Canadian academic, holding a Chair in Public Policy at Saskatchewan.) Though US focused, the book does a very good job of putting the US welfare state into international context and introducing its readers to a broad-based social scientific study of social policy. It is an important book because it has the potential at least of raising the profile of social policy as a distinctive field of study in the US. What is more, while it may not be suitable as an ab initio introduction for students outside the US, it provides a refreshing perspective and some useful up-to-the-minute discussion of social policy provision in the US.

It is a short and accessible text consisting of just five substantive chapters. The first maps out the territory of what counts as social policy and the concept of the welfare state. The second chapter, drawing on conventional welfare regime theory, seeks to place the US in international context. The third chapter considers the development of welfare states, focusing on the consequences of economic and demographic change, labour mobilisation and the part played by political institutions. The fourth chapter tells the story of retrenchment and restructuring of the state welfare during the past three decades, while the fifth and final chapter focuses on the ‘looming challenges’ of globalisation, rising health-care costs and accelerating social inequalities.

The book is published in the Polity Press Political Sociology series, which gives some indication of the approach adopted by this author. There is a heavy political science component and a strong emphasis on the comparative analysis of processes of policy change. Other aspects of the account are less well developed and there are some puzzling gaps. Béland focuses on cash transfers and health care provision, with somewhat minimal attention to housing, while asserting that education, though ‘a form of social policy in the broad sense . . . is typically not seen as a component of the welfare state’ (pp. 17–18). Social care provision receives no mention. There is a wealth of comparison with welfare states in other ‘developed’ countries, but, apart from a discussion of the implications of globalisation on US social policy, nothing in relation to substantive social policy issues in a wider global context. There is, however, a very valuable discussion of the central role of private sector provision and the significance of federalism as a major factor for anyone seeking to understand social policy in the US.

The book is clearly written and highly readable. It is to be hoped that it will become an important book in the US. It is suitable for undergraduate students and as a quick introductory read for graduate students. Though it is not a specialist text, it may well be of some interest to those social policy students and scholars elsewhere with an interest in social policy in the US.