Both the volumes reviewed here are, in their different ways, concerned with welfare state change. The edited work by Hvinden and Johansson focuses on social citizenship in the Nordic welfare states and asks whether accepted ‘socio-liberal’ conceptions of citizenship are changing in the face of multifarious pressures confronting the Scandinavian model from above and below. For Aidukaite, the fact of change – ‘transformation’ may be a better word – is less contested because more immediately visible: in the Baltic states it is less a question of whether welfare systems have changed and more a matter of how.

The Hvinden and Johansson volume is excellently edited. A clear introduction draws the reader into a concise theoretical overview of contemporary debates about the changing nature of social citizenship and outlines the parameters of the book. It is organised around four main themes: global/European challenges to national welfare states; the impact of activation policies on traditional conceptions of social citizenship; the increased role of anti-discrimination and human rights legislation in promoting the wellbeing of citizens; and the shift in responsibility for social protection from the ‘collective level to the individual level’ (p. 17). If there is an overriding question, it is whether libertarian and republican conceptions of citizenship are supplanting traditional socio-liberal understandings . . . to which the answer is a highly qualified ‘no’.

Taken together, contributions to the volume remain faithful to the core themes. The first section provides three necessary, if straightforward, chapters which explore changing meanings of citizenship and the nature of the turn towards ‘activation’ as a prelude to a series of chapters in Section 2 that examine the ‘Nordic Model’ of labour market policy in greater detail. One issue is clear: it is becoming increasingly difficult to talk in terms of the traditional ‘Nordic Model’ if by this is meant ‘a distinct universalistic, egalitarian and inclusive type of activation policy’ (p. 65). It appears, however, that, whatever the merits of the older model, the Scandinavian states are recasting their activation policies in relatively similar ways. Johansson and Hvinden argue, for instance, that, although the particular balance of rights and duties in activation policies varies among the Nordic states – Denmark and Finland differing from Sweden and Norway in certain respects – each country is placing ever-greater emphasis upon the obligations of citizens to take up the employment opportunities on offer.

If this move can be construed as a shift in favour of ‘libertarian’ citizenship with its connotations of increased individual responsibility in the marketplace, other sections of the book make it clear that alternative forms of citizenship are emerging in different spheres of welfare. Indeed, a more participatory, ‘republican’ form of citizenship is becoming increasingly important as a response to institutional changes at national and supranational levels. In a perhaps over-optimistic assessment of the impact of the OMC, Johansson argues, for example, that ‘the OMC process has provided social NGOs with a reason to mobilize, develop a common agenda and act collectively’ (p. 137). There are exceptions, to be sure (see the chapter which focuses on Russian women in North Norway by Lotherington and Fjørtoft), but, as Anker and Halvorsen note (see pp. 109–11) of Norway and Denmark, new forms of participation and the social and political spaces required for the expression of different understandings of citizen engagement are beginning to emerge.

These pressures for change on the traditional Nordic universalist welfare state are by no means all home-grown. The final section of the volume examines the impact of the EU on national understandings of citizenship, the contributions generally concluding that the Union currently provides an important challenge to conceptions of rights in the ‘EU-sceptical Nordic states (all except Finland)’ (see Ketscher, p. 154). The chapter by Whittle and Halvorsen argues that new possibilities for disabled people as a result of new EU disability laws constitute one significant example of the ways in which supranational legislation can impact upon ‘reluctant’ national governments, allowing participant-users of services to produce new, ‘active’ understandings of citizenship at local levels.

If the erosion of policies which gave rise to socio-liberal forms of citizenship in the mid-to-late twentieth century mean that the traditional protective bond between citizen and (national) state has weakened, it is certainly not yet destroyed. Instead, as the editors correctly point out, citizens in the Nordic countries (and indeed elsewhere) are experiencing the ‘tensions, conflicts and ambiguities’ (p. 225) inherent in contemporary social citizenship as socio-liberal understandings are forced to compete with very different perceptions of social and political belonging. The next task, as the editors state, is to develop a clearer understanding of the nature of, and tensions among, these fractured, hybridised forms of social citizenship. Thanks to its clarity and theoretical coherence, however, this volume in fact provides an excellent starting-point.

Turning to Aidukaite's volume, the reader is presented with four interesting papers on various aspects of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian social policies as these have developed since the collapse of communism. A key concern is whether social policy in the Baltic states is developing characteristics of one or other of the regime types set out by Esping-Andersen in The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. If the trajectories are not yet entirely clear, in very general terms, Aidukaite's verdict is that Baltic welfare is becoming increasingly ‘individualised’. This is not to say that the three countries have indulged in a headlong rush to welfare US-style. In fact, as Aidukaite makes it clear, Scandinavian and German influences are plainly visible in the Estonian and Latvian social security systems, particularly perhaps in arrangements for old age pensions. Nevertheless, these countries fall ‘somewhere in between the conservative-corporat-ist . . . and liberal . . . regimes’, while ‘in Lithuania, the liberal model probably prevails’ (p. 83). Of the three countries, Aidukaite considers that only Latvia may avoid moving further towards a welfare system based upon neo-liberal assumptions and solutions.

Of course, the post-socialist context of Baltic welfare is a vitally important factor in the development of social policy – and nowhere is this better illustrated than in the attitudes of citizens in all three countries towards family policies. While it is plain from the qualitative research carried out with recipients of cash benefits that many benefits meet with substantial approval, the real issue concerns the unpopularity of child allowances. These universal benefits, which are paid until the child's fifteenth and sixteenth birthdays in Estonia and Latvia respectively, are not only viewed by recipients as an expensive means of providing support which could be better targeted on those most in need, but, in addition, they are regarded as vestiges of an unpopular system of state-controlled welfare.

These are interesting and important findings – and indeed, taken as a whole, this volume provides a careful and detailed assessment of the current state of Baltic welfare. It is a pity, then, that a few slightly unsatisfactory features detract somewhat from the overall contribution. The lack of an index may have been beyond the author's control – but it is irritating nevertheless. More substantively, the book really is four distinct ‘papers’ (some were published as separate pieces before inclusion in this volume) and, although the opening chapter attempts to integrate the material, a proper conclusion is required to bring together the themes and issues which arise from the empirical studies. This need for greater integration is at its clearest in the material covered in Chapters 2 and 3. The extended consideration of changing social insurance institutions and the transformation of social policy in the Baltic countries demands a sustained analytical examination of the recurring binaries of universalism/particularism, collectivism/individualism, liberalism/corporatism and state/civil society. However, even without a more developed theoretical dimension Aidukaite provides a stimulating and accessible exploration of welfare development in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which certainly contributes to our understanding of social policy change in post-socialist societies.