A method for an important and good scientific book: preheat the reader by selecting ‘the Person’, someone respected and highly recognised in academia, whose work has contributed significantly to the development of science; identify the most important findings and concepts developed by this Person, and present them. The next step is to bring together some of the leading scholars in the field, who are either dealing with similar issues to ‘the Person’ or are able to apply ‘the Person's’ findings, so that in a creative way they can look at the areas of their own interests. The aim of the scholars is to identify and explore key issues and offer challenging interpretations. Mix all the ingredients together under the careful supervision of demanding editors. The book is almost ready, but to make it even more interesting it is advisable to add a chapter authored by ‘the Person’, in which he or she can actively react to the opinions and work of the book's co-authors.

Aleksandra Kaasch and Paul Stubbs, the editors of the book Transformations in Global and Regional Social Policy, applied the above method and had as a result an interesting, important and by all means a book worth reading. The role of ‘the Person’ is played by Bob Deacon, whose lifelong contribution to global social policy (GSP) represents the main subject of the book. Deacon, who holds the UNESCO-UNU chair in Regional Integration, Migration and Free Movement of People, and was a founding editor of the journals Critical Social Policy and Global Social Policy, was also one of the first scholars in the world who recognised the global aspects of social policy. He has acted as consultant or advisor to many governments and international institutions (e.g. ILO, UNICEF, World Bank). The hallmark of Bob Deacon's work is the term ‘global social policy’, which he introduced and advanced its study. The contributors to the book, Deacon's collaborators and recognisable scholars, discuss his major contributions in the field of global and regional social policy.

Deacon's contribution to our understanding and to empirical studies of how global markets and global actors influence national social policy remains priceless. The global social policy model, as developed by Deacon, is essentially based on two dimensions: prescriptions, relating to different national social policies disseminated by global policy actors, and ‘genuine global governance’, emerging supranational social policies and the mechanism of global redistribution, global social regulations and global social rights. Deacon defines the field of study of social policy as ‘those mechanisms, policies and procedures used by governments, working with other actors, to alter the distributive and social outcomes of economic activity’ (Deacon, 2007: 4). In his exploration of global social policy, Deacon uses the framework of the 3Rs: redistribution mechanisms, regulatory activity and articulation and legislation of rights. His conception of social policy combines three mechanisms: redistribution, for example from richer to poorer, from childless to families with children; regulation, that makes companies socially responsible; social rights that are prescribed for any jurisdiction. Deacon asks difficult, significant and intriguing questions in this work, e.g. ‘Is the case for a global social policy of redistribution, regulation and rights across borders being put by scholars and listened to by policy advocates within and around international organisations?’ (Deacon, 2007).

A global social perspective is commonly defined as consisting of two dimensions or processes; on the one hand, there are prescriptions, relating to different national social policies, as developed, discussed and disseminated by global policy actors, while, on the other hand, it is about a genuinely global level, or the ‘emerging supranational social policies and mechanisms of global redistribution, global social regulation and global social rights’. Deacon (1997) is an active advocate for global social regulations. He indicates that free trade, global social regulation, global redistribution and the empowerment of citizens before a global court of social rights have to go hand in hand.

In their chapters of Transformations, Ian Gough, Asuncion Lera S. Clair and Victoria Lawson suggest that the 3Rs framework needs to be completed with a fourth ‘R’, namely ‘resource consciousness’. In other words, the scope of the attention paid to global social policy research and practice should be expanded to include the planet's ecological crisis and natural resources depletion. Gough put it is this way: ‘social policy would need to combine with environmentalism to forge a unified eco-social policy that can achieve ecologically beneficial and socially just impacts’. It is also a methodological challenge: to overcome some of the major disconnections and cleavages between the social and climate change policies. Similarly, St Clair and Lawson suggest that scholars must simultaneously address the contradictions in market-based approaches to poverty reduction (global social policy of growth and trickle down) and, as well as market responses, to climate and global environmental changes. They are clearly opposed to promoting economic growth in the name of the poor, and warn that in the near future, as climate impacts increase, we are likely to witness a competition for funds between the welfare state and the environmental state. They stress the need to recognise the ecological connections between human beings and the places they inhabit in order to understand the poverty there.

Robert O'Brien addressed the issue of policy synergy between the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. O'Brien concludes that, although in the 1980s and 1990s the structural adjustment policies of the World Bank and IMF had negative consequences on labour conditions in general, the changes in the rhetoric of the organisations has provided space for strengthening labour standards and conditions since the late 1990s. In other words, according to O'Brien, the World Bank and the IMF ceased to be opponents of labour-friendly policies and are more likely to take a different view nowadays. However, the institutions remain unpredictable when faced with anything that runs counter to neoliberalism. Deacon (2013) formulates similar reservations. He indicates a new period of cooperation on social protection between the World Bank and ILO, which started in 2012, while questioning the authenticity of the Bank's commitment since the institution launched the new initiative, which is a framework for assessing social protection systems.

Meri Koivusalo's contribution expresses a cautious pessimism about Deacon's 3Rs in the contemporary world. In a convincing way, she shows that the critical voices are too weak to have any significant impact on global rights, regulation and redistribution. With the example of health care, Koivusalo stresses that opposition to the global market fails to have significant implications for social rights, regulation and redistribution (3Rs). The chapter presents the challenges faced by health care systems in the era of both the commercialisation and corporatisation of health-care provisions and of the individualisation of financial risk as well as the reduction of regulatory policy space.

Shana Cohen addresses Deacon's concerns about the lack of attention to both the service providers and ‘users’ of services in GSP studies. She suggests that a policy of local social actions is capable of influencing global social policy principles, methods, and practices. Cohen argues for a need to recognise how policies can influence the social identity and practices of social service practitioners. When adopted, the approach would lead to indications for locally trained front-line service providers to achieve global and national policy objectives.

By exploring the social policy and social protection reforms in three Asian countries (Cambodia, Indonesia, Korea), Huck-ju Kwon illustrates the interactions between the supranational and domestic actors. Huck-ju Kwon stresses the meditating role of countries when it comes to the impact of global social policy on national social policy. The contribution sets three different ways, which countries may follow to bring global ideas to domestic policy settings: active learning, involuntary imposition, and a mix of them both. Kwon suggests that Deacon neglects the influence GSP on national social policy-making in his analysis. In fact, Deacon focuses purely on the mechanisms of developing global social policies in his recent work. However, in the 1990s he paid a lot attention to the role of global social policy actors, influencing national social policy in post-communist countries (e.g. Hungary, Ukraine, Bulgaria).

In her chapter, Nicola Yeates provides a comprehensive review of political underpinnings, institutional forms and the future prospects for social policy. Yeates criticises Deacon for not focusing enough on the role of the transnational movements in global social change. She argues that Deacon pays too much attention to global and intergovernmental institutions and not enough to how the policies are shaped by actors on a regional level. Yeates bases her arguments on the premise that ‘global social policy is formed and contested not just in multilateral spheres of policy making but also in regional ones’. She presents the different forms the regional policies take and how the regionalising trends affect our understanding of GSP.

Care represents a good example of a social area, which loses (at least, partly) its intrinsic value when affected by the market. According to Fiona Williams, the global care crisis results from care undervaluation and the interdependencies between richer and poorer countries. In her chapter, Williams contrasts the ethics of care to individualism and self-sufficiency. She presents care as a collective social good that is crucial to the concepts of social justice at both a local and a global level. Human beings are perceived as interdependent rather than self-sufficient in her framework. She refers to the crisis of care as a part of the other crises (financial and ecological) in the world, and points out its multidimensional (moral, political, economical and social) character. As a consequence of the care ethics crisis, the dominant logic of policy-making focuses on competitiveness, marketisation, the ethic of paid work and austerity. Williams’ sharp reflection on care represents a beneficial and important fulfilment of the gap in Deacon's work. In the summary of the book, Deacon himself refers to it as the fifth R for ‘relational’. In a very convincing way, Williams presents the global care chain and key dynamics in the connection between global and regional development in migration and care work: the transnational movement of health and care labour, the transnational dynamics of care commitments as migrants, the transnational movement of care capital and the role of transnational and international political actors.

One of the main aims and strength of the book is the challenge to ‘methodological nationalism’ and the movement beyond the national or cross-country comparative work of national welfare states. Let's illustrate it with an example of care policy. Most of the studies of care policy are limited either to one country analysis or to cross-country comparisons. This methodological approach fails to recognise the global processes and their implications both for societies and social policy design. It is based on a premise that the policy is designed in the country and leads to consequences to society in that country. In her chapter, Fiona Williams indicates the connection between the global and regional developments of migration and care work. In a clear and convincing way, Williams creates a picture of the world, in which migration and care are closely related. Williams indicates how the international political economy of care operates and how it contributes to a global care crisis.

It is obvious that while the scenery changes dramatically, the theoretical framework of global social policy needs to be further developed. It is needed to improve our understanding of both the (national and supranational) actors’ role and the processes. Nowadays we observe the simultaneous changes of the framework proposed by Deacon; with two further ‘Rs’ included in the framework of GSP (‘resources consciousness’ and ‘relationality’), new actors added (i.e. BRICS for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), and new policy fields (such as climate change) being explored. It is a great advantage to the book, which does not represent a simple tribute to the work of a distinguished scholar, but actively looks for ways to improve his ideas.

Many of us, being scientists, tend to present special issues in isolation from the larger whole. The method involving any isolation of the phenomenon from a greater whole has its obvious advantages, but it can also lead to a blurring of what is most important. We live in an era, in which many of the phenomena are extremely complex and overlapping each other. We are comfortably and safely trying to solve a specific problem at the local level without going into the discussion in a broader context. While analysing care, social inequalities (poverty), the labour market and climate change, the authors of this book delineate everything for us to map dependencies and relationships. The presented book represents a valuable contribution to the academic and political discussion on (global) social policy and especially on policy-making processes. My only reservation about the book is the style of writing. There are some parts of the book which are written in a way that might be simply difficult to read for those who discover Deacon's ideas for themselves.

The book represents a demanding academic exercise which aims at showing the mechanisms of how global processes affect a situation on a global scale, in a continent, a region or a country. Hence, it is an excellent read for both researchers focusing on individual countries and those who look at the processes on a larger scale. The book represents a good example of using a multidisciplinary approach in social science. While reading, we get a strong impression that cannot help but stress the use of multidisciplinary work to answer most of the questions we face nowadays. Disciplines are necessary for academic training, but have little relevance to the world around us.