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Book Review: The Boundaries of Welfare: European Integration and the New Spatial Politics of Social Protection

agenda was stronger in the UK. Most surprising are the findings concerning change in family policy. Here, both countries started to expand measures in the 1990s: Britain with an emphasis on wage subsidies for parents, more guaranteed child-care places for pre-schooling, and the adoption of employment-centred policy for mothers with young children; and Germany with a more interventionist approach focused on improving the material situation and social entitlements of mothers (e.g. introduction of child-raising pension credits). This trend towards providing financial means to families, especially maternity/parental benefits, has become even more pronounced in Germany since the ‘Grand Coalition’ took office last year. Clasen explains it with reference to the changing policy preferences of key actors and institutional factors such as the role of the Constitutional Court in Germany, but also to socio-economic and cultural factors creating new problem pressures via impacts on family formation and employment patterns. Clasen’s book represents an outstanding contribution to the welfare state retrenchment and restructuring literature. It is especially valuable because it questions and qualifies received wisdoms in the debate, such as the stereotyping of the German and British welfare states or the onedimensionality of the concept of change. He is not only well equipped to demonstrate where change has taken place, but also how it can be understood in terms of causation and dynamics. Furthermore, given its quality and strength, the analytical frame developed could easily be adopted to other countries and programmes. All these virtues, together with the clarity and comprehensiveness of the book, make it a very readable piece deserving of a broad audience well beyond scholars of the German and British welfare states.