What happens to social democratic parties when they pursue a policy of welfare state reforms under the Third Way paradigm? Which electoral consequences are these parties faced with when they attempt to appeal to new voters from the centre of the political spectrum through major policy changes such as the change from a state-centred to a state-and-market-centred approach, from priority for decommodification in social protection to the introduction of recommodifying structures in the welfare state, and from an exclusive emphasis on public social spending to the upgrading of private social spending in health care or in pension schemes? This is the major research question of C. Arndt's comparative study on Germany, Denmark, Britain and Sweden. According to the overall message of this book, the electoral consequences of Third Way welfare state reforms are a disaster for social democratic parties. These reforms, Arndt argues, produce a major electoral setback to Third Way social democracy. But in contrast to many other contributions to the literature, Arndt adds context conditionality to the causal chain from welfare state reform to electoral consequences. The nature of the electoral setback, he argues, is contingent upon the electoral system and the party competition social democratic parties face when they enter the politically risky business of reforming the welfare state. Under the proportional representation formula (PR), the electoral setback for social democratic parties involves dealignment of its core constituencies in the lower middle classes and the working class. But it also includes realignment of former social democratic voters, because in a PR system ‘dangerous competitors for Third Way social democracy’ (p. 201) are present or can easily emerge, such as a smaller leftist-socialist party, or a populist right-wing party or possibly also a pro-welfare state party of centrist or Christian Democratic complexion. In contrast, a majoritarian electoral system, such as in Britain, functions in a different way. In a majoritarian system, dealignment of core voters occurs through exit to the non-voter camp, and in contrast to the PR system the road to realignment in potential competitor parties is blocked. The fundamental cause is that the first-past-the-post electoral system ‘effectively prevents the emergence of serious competitor parties for Third Way social democrats’ (p. 201).

Three of the country studies support Arndt's argument in a direct way, while the fourth study, on Sweden, lends support in an indirect fashion. According to Arndt, Sweden's Social Democrats abstained from Third Way paradigms and were therefore able to maintain stable support of their traditional core constituencies. In contrast, the German Sozialdemokratische Partei (SPD) suffered major electoral losses from the social policy reforms of the first and the second red-green government (1998–2002 and 2002–05) and the participation of the SPD in the Grand Coalition government in 2005−09. Moreover, a ‘credible left-socialist challenger’ (p. 202) attracted a significant proportion of former social democratic core voters in the German case. However, as the Danish case reveals, potential competitors on the left, which previously lost credibility as defenders of the status quo of the welfare state, are not the winners of the electoral changes that Third Way reforms generate. Finally, the British case in the period up to 2007 demonstrates, that ‘New Labour’, or, in Arndt's terminology, Britain's variety of Third way social democrats, ‘lose core voters to abstention if they reform the welfare state under a majoritarian electoral system’ (p. 202).

Arndt's book is an important contribution to the study of the political consequences of welfare state reforms. It rests on an in-depth study of micro-level data on voting and on macro-level data on welfare state reforms and the political context. In theoretical terms, the author interprets the data with major tools from studies on dealignment and realignment on the one hand, and with a framework which integrates an Esping-Andersenian view of welfare state regimes with the new politics of the welfare state literature. There are several important messages that Arndt has to offer. Particularly important is the argument which adds context conditionality – the type of electoral system and the type of party competition – to the high political risks of Third Way welfare state reforms.

Arndt`s book is a must for all scholars of welfare state reforms. However, the core argument that Third Way welfare state reforms result necessarily in massive electoral setbacks may not be the last word. Whether welfare state reforms are accepted or rejected by specific group of voters seems to depend also on whether the political leadership is able to frame and communicate the necessity of major policy changes to the electorate. Moreover, Arndt's hypotheses and the data on vote shares of the various parties since the 1960s suggest that it would be worthwhile to study the electoral consequences of welfare state reforms within the wider context of alternative causes of the electoral losses of social democratic parties over the last three or four decades. Are Third Way reforms the major driver of electoral setbacks of these parties? Would the trend of decreasing vote shares of social democratic parties be stopped or even reverted if these parties choose a policy of non-reform of the welfare state? Or is there something stronger than Third Way reforms on the electoral market? And why is it that some of the most massive electoral setbacks of social democratic parties were stronger in periods before these parties adopted Third Way reforms, such as the massive losses of the German social democrats among its core constituencies in the 1980s which Arndt's data in table 5.1 (p. 102) indicate or the massive losses of Sweden's social democratic party in 1991, 1998, 2006 and 2010 (p. 158)?