As Yeates and Holden point out in their introduction, whilst readers exist both on the general topic of globalisation, and on different aspects of social policy, there has been little until recently that allows teachers and their students to find a representative sample of key sources about both globalisation and social policy in one accessible volume. This is the primary purpose that this reader seeks to fulfil, and as such it is sure to provide a very valuable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students and their tutors on social policy and related courses in politics and applied social science. Given its structure, however, the manner in which the students may need to be guided in using the text to derive most benefit from it is something we shall return to later.
The reader is composed of 38 different ‘chapters’, plus a contextualising introduction and introductions for each section of the book. The chapters comprise a mixture of academic pieces from books, journal articles – the majority of pieces – coupled with a number of policy documents and declarations. These latter are derived from a variety of international organisations such as the Millennium Development Goals (UN), and the Global Commission on the Social Determinants of Health recommendations on new policies from their report ‘Closing the Gap’. Overall, therefore, the collection attempts not only to provide the reader with an insight into various academic debates and analyses of global social policy, but also to provide a flavour of current political debates and policy initiatives specifically focusing on social policy at the global level. There might, of course, have been different collections made by different editors on this topic and it is worth stressing that Yeates and Holden make it clear that their criterion for selection is summarised in the phrase ‘social policy at the global level’. Whilst the selection does not ignore the relationship between globalisation processes and what goes on in social policy within individual countries and welfare states, the fundamental focus throughout is at the global, rather than the national or sub-national level. Yeates’ own definition of global social policy (GSP), derived from her earlier work Understanding Global Social Policy (Reference Yeates2008), provides the organising principle and focus of this reader's selection: ‘i) the content and processes of social policy formation in cross-border spheres of governance – be these spheres multilateral, governmental or non-governmental; and ii) the effects and impacts of cross-border flows of people, goods, services, ideas and finance on the provision, finance and regulation of social welfare’ (p. xviii). This approach is clearly derived from another well-known and influential text in the field, Deacon et al.'s Global Social Policy: International Organisations and the Future of Welfare (Reference Deacon, Hulse and Stubbs1997) where they talk of ‘the practice[s] of supranational actors [embodying] global social redistribution, global social regulation, and global social provision and/or empowerment’. However, whilst the activities of bodies such as the UN, the International Monetary Fund, Save the Children, Oxfam and large transnational corporations are clearly considered here, Yeates and Holden also argue that ‘GSP now also embraces the imaginaries, activities and actions of non-elite actors and movements’ (p xviii). Here they point to regional groupings of countries, especially those in the South, and what they call non-elite transnational policy actors and their campaigning networks. Thus, they argue that in order to make sense of social policy at a global level one needs to consider the multiplicity of actors, organisations and networks that are now involved in policy-making and debate, and the selection in the Reader attempts to reflect this complex network.
The reader is structured into five sections, though Section 4 is further divided into two sub-sections. The first section provides an introduction into the ways that globalisation processes may be seen to be impacting upon social policy and welfare systems and how these processes may be understood. The second section focuses in particular upon global poverty and inequality and seeks to examine what analysis at the global level reveals about poverty and inequality in the various parts of the world and how they might be measured and defined and indeed how such definitions affect policy formulation and practice. The third section focuses on the various social policy actors and institutions at the global level but set in the context of global social policy as a political practice. Here the selection includes not only international governmental and non-governmental organisations, but also commercial actors and institutions plus public–private partnerships. The fourth section falls into two sub-sections: the first focuses on the impacts of globalisation on national welfare states, especially the economic impacts of globalisation, whilst the second focuses on the previous political dominance of the so-called Washington Consensus upon both national and global social policy thinking and practice. In the fifth and final section, the focus is on, as the title indicates, ‘Global social policy futures’. Taking the previous dominance of the Washington Consensus as its starting point, the section comprises a number of different pieces that seek to both question current social policy practice at a global level, and also to suggest new patterns of global social policy governance and policy initiatives.
Taken as a whole, then, this reader provides an excellent range of pieces focusing upon social policy at a global level conveniently packaged into one volume. As the editors explain, the Reader is meant to complement more directly analytical texts and indeed Yeates’ own work Understanding Global Social Policy (Reference Yeates2008) is mentioned in this regard. This is a significant complementarity and one that needs to be recognised by both students and academic tutors using the text. Despite the overall introduction and the section introductions one cannot escape the feeling that this selection needs still further explication and ‘unpacking’, either with reference to a companion text book or/and through careful tutorial guidance. Those who have worked in this area for some time may feel reasonably au fait with the content of these various pieces, but it has to be said that most of the contributions contained taken-for-granted features of the globalisation debate and differing national approaches to welfare that readers relatively new to this field would find somewhat unclear. The editors clearly had to limit their selection, but one cannot escape the feeling that the decision to keep as rigorously to the global level as they have – eschewing coverage of individual social policy sectors or the activities of particular countries – gives the reader a certain level of remoteness from the knowledge and experience of those who read it which might have been reduced by more reference to national social policy and policies in the era of globalisation.
