Introducing the key themes of Administering Welfare Reform in their opening chapter, Paul Henman and Menno Fenger describe their task as a critical examination of the changing governance of the welfare state, and the shifting participants, practices and processes involved in welfare administration. What follows is a highly informative journey through eleven countries’ experiences in the reform of welfare administration (sometimes presented as individual case studies, sometimes in comparative perspective), along with broader discussions of the role of international NGOs in welfare governance and the impact of the European Employment Strategy.

The editors’ introductory chapter makes some important arguments explaining the rise of the ‘new governance’ as a response to perceived failure in both bureaucratic and market models of welfare delivery. Rather than relying solely upon a familiar critique of ‘New Public Management’ as a means of marketising welfare governance, Fenger and Henman provide a more nuanced discussion of new forms of governance as a response to the pressures of globalisation and for local devolution, acknowledging the need for a range of actors to contribute in response to the increasingly complex problems of the welfare state.

However, Henman's chapter establishing the theoretical foundations for the book then takes the ‘fuzzy concept’ of governance to task, arguing that the Foucauldian-inspired ‘governmentality’ provides a more effective, ‘critical and subversive’ model for analysing the changing administration of welfare that ‘does not simply take at face value the dominant discourses for markets and partnerships’. This is perhaps a little unfair – much of the existing literature on welfare reform has deployed the concept of governance while also providing a robust critique of markets and partnerships – and in general the book's argument around the necessity for a governmentality approach seems somewhat weak. Certainly, the co-authors contributing disparate empirical chapters appear to have been unconvinced – only Howard's account of Australia's privatisation of Public Employment Service (PES) functions refers back to governmentality in any substantial way.

Nevertheless, these empirical chapters – divided into three parts focusing on changing participants, practices and processes in welfare – provide a number of important insights. In Part 1 on ‘participants’, White's comparison of the rise of state–third-sector compacts in Canada, France and the UK provides a concise and well-informed description of the development of internal welfare markets and their impacts on the behaviour of voluntary organisations, which are often caught between their dual roles as contractors for government-funded services and advocates for policy change. Barnes’ chapter comparing the experiences of voluntary organisations in the US and New Zealand further illustrates this point, while Fenger's analysis of changing public–private–third-sector relationships in activation policy provides a useful welfare regime-based comparison that takes in the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and the UK. Together, these chapters build a powerful critique of how competitive tendering and New Public Management practices have impacted on NGOs, which have often been forced to transform their operations and rationalise their services in response.

Part 2 on changing ‘practices’ perhaps features the pick of the empirical chapters. Handler's well-argued critique of reforms to US activation, in the Clinton era and since, exposes the failure in service quality and the imposition of arbitrary ‘Work First’ regulations that have followed from the privatisation and localisation of welfare. Howard's considered discussion of the privatisation of Australian activation refuses to endorse the simplistic picture of rigidly applied neo-liberal regulation presented in some studies. Instead, he notes the manner in which street-level bureaucracy has produced a diverse range of pragmatic compromises in how clients are treated at the local level. This is not to justify the Australian model ∼ rather Howard exposes how Australia's shift towards a localised and largely privatised PES has produced a rag bag of half-implemented, contradictory approaches. Wright's chapter is also concerned with street-level bureaucracy, charting the problems faced by professionals working in the UK's PES who are required to both regulate and police benefits, and provide one-to-one counselling for clients. The research that Wright reports, finds largely negative impressions among clients regarding the ‘Personal Adviser’ counselling role provided by PES officials, and the author should perhaps acknowledge that other researchers have since found more mixed results, including some positive responses to advice services delivered under programmes such as the New Deal. But Wright's broader point, regarding the potential for practices that are built around simplistic job-entry targets to undermine the quality of services and outcomes, is well made.

Part 3 on ‘processes’ brings together chapters on the influence of the European Employment Strategy on Portugal's Territorial Employment Pacts (by Valadas); the emerging role of international NGOs (Ramia); and the regionalisation of social assistance in Italy, which has reinforced disparities in the effectiveness and quality of services (Kazepov and Genova). The editors then conclude with a chapter reviewing the pervasiveness of new governance and managerialist approaches in reforming welfare services, with the preceding discussions used to argue for three models of welfare administration (bureaucratic, New Public Management. and governance-based). As one would expect, the authors are quick to note the ideal-typical and overlapping nature of these models in the light of the complex realities on the ground.

Administering Welfare Reform provides a valuable comparative analysis of the impact of changing welfare governance on the structure and delivery of public services. The relatively short chapters at times leave one wanting more, but at its best the book offers important insights into how multi-agency governance, marketisation and managerialism have impacted on the participants, practices and processes at the heart of the new welfare state.