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Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens (2012), Democracy and the Left: Social Policy and Inequality in Latin America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. £18, pp. 342, pbk

This text is a worthwhile contribution to a burgeoning field we may wish to call ‘Big Society studies’. The breadth of the discussion, not only regarding the topics covered but in encompassing both sociological and social policy perspectives, makes this text relevant to a variety of readers. The editors have delivered contributions with historical and contemporary claims, as well as providing space for critical writers seeing the Big Society as neoliberal rhetoric alongside those engaged in more detailed policy consideration. In doing so, they have also given cohesion to the volume as a unique and detailed perspective on the government’s policy agenda. It may initially appear that the political environment is against this text, with the Big Society having largely disappeared from the mouths of coalition ministers in recent months. However, this overlooks one of this book’s central claims: we should see the Big Society as part of a wider agenda for social policy. As Albrow’s chapter discusses, by invoking conceptions of ‘fairness’, ‘unequal influence’ and ‘people power’ this agenda may well produce results unintended by its Conservative parents. Anti-tax avoidance protests groups and striking public sector workers may demonstrate how ‘“Big Society” may well turn out to be the sound bite that bites back’ (p. 115).