Among various new trends in democratic politics, it is easy to notice that more and more mayors position themselves as candidates for national leadership: Italy's former PM, Renzi, who had been mayor of Florence; Francois Holland and before him Jacques Chirac were mayors of Tulle and Paris; Mauricio Macri, president of Argentina since 2015 was mayor of Buenos Aires until 2015; and so on. This is only one aspect of the growing political power of cities and local governing bodies. In this fascinating book, Johansson and Panican, together with ten prominent scholars of social policy, social work, sociology, urban studies and political science, provide a multi-disciplinary review and analysis of how, in the last two decades, welfare systems and welfare provision have become more and more local, as opposed to national – that is to say, local authorities are seen as responsible for the planning and provision of welfare services.

There are several interesting questions at stake. One is why this is happening, and it seems that this question is not this book's focus. The authors take it as given that globalism on the one hand, and skeptical attitudes towards government and bureaucracy on the other hand, created a shift both in values and in politics. Citizens expect these services to be provided locally, and the state finds it easier to meet this expectation, as the state itself is subject to the demands of the market, international financial bodies, trade agreements and so on, and therefore finds that its power to design and practice policies is limited. This goes hand in hand with research such as Bell and de Shalit's The Spirit of Cities or Barber's If Mayors Ruled the World, which suggest that indeed cities are taking upon themselves some of the political functions that have been associated with the state.

The other interesting question is how this shift is taking place, and here the authors put forward a remarkable thesis. To grasp this rightly, they argue, we need to look at various models of welfare provision. This makes the book an exciting book to read, because not only do is it explained how the move towards the local is a challenge to the national model of welfare, but the authors also seek to understand what this move (from the national to the local) can tell us about the competitive models (or regimes) of welfare provision: which can be summarized as the liberal, social-democratic and corporatist-conservative models of welfare.

The first chapters provide the theoretical and conceptual framework. After reviewing the ‘move towards the local’ in welfare, the book asks whether it is a matter of scale only (the answer is that localizing welfare services is not merely providing them on a smaller scale; both the rationale, the justification and the process are different in kind) and then goes on to map the various actors and different arrangements which participate in this process. The next chapter asks whether Europe or the European institutions can play a role in the process where welfare services are becoming local. Focusing on the concept of ‘active inclusion’, the authors show how the European initiative generated (or failed to generate) various reforms in national minimum wage policies; which, in turn, had an impact on how local level actions were shaped.

From there onwards the book explores and compares the various models of welfare provision and how the shift from the national to the local communicates, so to speak, with these models' presumptions, ideologies, and practices. One common question in these chapters which I found fascinating is how, when welfare services are becoming more and more local, this influences the role of NGOs and civil society organizations. The authors argue that civil society takes it upon itself to participate in the planning, and not only supplying, of policies. If this is true, one might speculate that the shrinking power of the state due to global processes is not necessarily a threat to democracy, but rather a kind of opportunity to legitimize and enable new levels of (local) participatory democracy.

To examine the corporatist-conservative model, or ‘welfare regime’, the book studies the case of Dortmund; to discuss the liberal model the book explores the case of Glasgow; to discuss the social democratic model the book explores the case of Malmo, which has become a destination city for many immigrants; and then two additional chapters discuss Turin and Radom, Poland. Finally, the two last chapters compare local governance models and their coping with integration and inclusion, not only of migrants but of disadvantage in general. Readers get the impression that governments' tendency to allow more and more local solutions to questions of inclusion and welfare should not be interpreted only as turning a blind eye to their responsibilities, but actually a process that might be seen as, while creating new problems, solving problems in different ways. Such processes can lead to greater inequality between localities and regions, and to decreased solidarity but can also be seen as fresh solutions to the current financial and economic crisis, which give rise to interesting reforms. In terms of research and how welfare services should be studied, the authors suggest that with some such services (e.g. minimum income provision) we should pay more attention to the local level and to multi-level services, because it is there that the majority of such policies are put into practice.