Since the publication of Global Social Policy (Deacon et al., Reference Deacon, Hulse and Stubbs1997), there has been growing academic attention to the importance of globalisation for social policy, building on Bob Deacon's pioneering work. The academic journal of the same name, published by Sage since April 2001, has also contributed greatly to the development of a distinct sub-discipline. The starting point of this latest contribution, with the same title as the book and the journal, traces a movement amongst social policy scholars from studying the national, through the rise of comparative analyses, to a focus on the global dimensions of social policy. The book addresses issues in the global governance of social policy, the role of global markets, supranational organisations and an emerging, if highly heterogeneous, ‘global civil society’. It looks, specifically, at the global dimensions of certain social problems, ranging from poverty and inequality, through global health issues, employment, demographics, migration and, importantly, the ‘wicked’ problem of climate change.

Although more implicit than explicit, the book is a kind of textbook based on a module on the topic taught by the authors at the University of Brighton. Each chapter provides a rather basic introduction to the topic at hand, over-reliant on literature that blurs the boundary between academic texts and more popular writings, with extensive reference to writers such as Naomi Klein, Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, and others. At other times, a single text is used as an authoritative introduction to the topic, as if preparatory reading for a student seminar. The book is peppered with ‘stand-alone’ boxes that address a particular theme or initiative, including: the global garments industry; tax avoidance and tax evasion; the Thai fishing industry; shock therapy in Bolivia; the World Social Forum; and others. The rationale for these boxes is never made clear and, again, often the reader is left wanting more information.

There is no original empirical work in the book, so that its added value, in academic terms at least, is rather limited. It is also rather too firmly rooted in a tradition of UK social policy scholarship, so that the importance of linking the study of global social policy to histories of imperialism and colonialism is hardly touched on, and scholarship from the so-called ‘global South’ is not given the attention it deserves. The book tends to neglect the increasing importance of ‘world regions’ for social policy outside of a rather limited treatment of the role of the European Union. The significance of the BRICS group of countries is barely touched upon. One of the most coherent chapters in the book, authored by Mei Lopez Trueba, on ‘The Global Dimensions of Health’, fails to mention pioneering works e.g. Meri Koivusalo and Eeva Olliila (Reference Koivusalo and Ollila1998). There are similar gaps in other chapters, with the authors often sacrificing academic rigour for pedagogic effect and normative statements.

Those new to the sub-discipline may find more of value in the book. The chapter on climate change, although far too condensed, apparently written at the time of the Paris accords, does provide a useful overview both of the key risks and possible policy choices, referencing some of the complex global power politics which makes the transition to a post-carbon economy difficult to envisage. The chapter shows the clear linkages between the issue of climate justice and global health, migration, employment, and poverty and inequality. The chapter on ‘Global Civil Society’ contains a focus on the World Social Forum and La Via Campesina (‘the peasant way’) as elements of a new ‘global social justice movement’ but, again, these are dealt with only very briefly and without direct reference to analyses deriving from these movements. Gender issues, in relation to both the feminisation of poverty and the rise of ‘global care chains’, are scattered across different chapters, rather than dealt with comprehensively.

Although there is an explicit normative position, throughout the book, regarding the problems of global neo-liberal capitalism, this is set out more as a model than a deep structure, with little analytical understanding of the importance of the new phase of financialised capitalism and its relation to ‘fossil capital’. Eschewing a ‘global social policy manifesto’, the book does, at least, conclude by suggesting that engagement with three themes – sharing work, wealth, and resources; reforming the global economic system; and achieving greater global democracy – is needed. Bob Deacon's articulation of ‘the three Rs of global social policy’ – redistribution, regulation and rights – as part of a “transformative global social policy” that “would need to contemplate global redistribution in a no-growth future” (Deacon, Reference Deacon, Kaasch and Stubbs2014; 204) remains, then, the terrain on which a battle for progressive global social policy, combining “progressive global principles from above” with “social pressures … from below” (ibid; 205), will be fought. Unfortunately, this book adds little of value, conceptually, empirically, policy-wise, or politically, to further that struggle.