The article of record as published may be located at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S004727941200015

Baylouny, Anne Marie

Calhoun, Institutional Archive of the Naval Postgraduate School

Calhoun: The NPS Institutional ArchiveFaculty and Researcher Publications Faculty and Researcher Publications2012James Midgley and Mitsuhiko Hosaka(eds.) (2011), Grassroots SocialSecurity in Asia, Abingdon: Routledge /Book ReviewBaylouny, Anne MarieMonterey, California:  Naval Postgraduate SchoolJames Midgley and Mitsuhiko Hosaka (eds.) (2011), Grassroots Social Security inAsia.Abingdon: Routledge. £75, pp. 157, hbk.http://hdl.handle.net/10945/4010110 reviewspolicy and polity) and then empirically through a case study of how the UK has responded tothe open method of co-ordination.Chapter 6 takes a legal turn and explores the effects and constraints imposed by EUeconomic law (free movement and competition law) on social policy-making capacity atMember State level. This offers a nuanced account of the intricate ways in which EU economiclaw interacts with national social policy. The next chapter is also legal in focus, exploringthe capacity for constitutional reform (through the Lisbon Treaty) to provide the foundationfor greater European governance in the social field. In the final chapter, the author looks tothe future – the post Lisbon period, and considers how different elements established underLisbon and the Open Method of Co-ordination might be taken forward. This chapter is strongat identifying how the resources, institutions and governance techniques bequeathed by theLisbon Strategy and the Open Method of Co-ordination can be harnessed.I see Armstrong’s main contribution in the analytical framework which he develops andapplies.What this book offers existing scholarship above all is a coherent framework to conceiveof and understand the last ten years of EU engagement with social policy. It should thereforeprove a classic in the field. Compared to existing work, Armstrong’s book ranks highly, andI would recommend it because it provides a clear, critical and readable account of the mostrecent developments in EU social policy and offers progressive proposals for the future. As faras I am concerned, this is the book if one wants to know how the EU developed its social policyapproach to poverty and social exclusion over the ten fateful years of the Lisbon Strategy.mary dalyQueen’s University BelfastM.Daly@qub.ac.ukJames Midgley and Mitsuhiko Hosaka (eds.) (2011), Grassroots Social Security in Asia.Abingdon: Routledge. £75, pp. 157, hbk.doi:10.1017/S0047279412000153Midgley, Hosaka and their collaborators take up an important, often neglected topic in thisbook on grassroots forms of social security and their viability, a subject that is essentialfor policy makers to understand. Poorer families, particularly in the Global South, areincreasingly vulnerable to risks as traditional community safeguards are eroded by the spreadof industrialisation and market forces. At the same time, states are more and more opposedideologically and practically to expanding protection. Exposed to risks of crop and livestockfailure, temporary shortfalls, lifecycle fluctuations in income, illness or death of the primarybreadwinner, families at the border of poverty can fall under the line. Even small additionalexpenses incurred with price rises threaten the ability of families to feed themselves and educatetheir children.Grassroots Social Security in Asia is concerned with finding solutions to these dangers andinforming policy makers of potential institutional solutions. The book focuses on the effortscommunities are taking to cope with such risks themselves in the form of the broad categoryof mutual aid organisations, while offering suggestions on how these can be improved throughthe addition of government and commercial links. Grassroots organisations have respondedin a number of ways to manage this risk, inconsistently varying by area, organisational ability,contacts and financing, among other variables. Advocating the increase of non-governmentalorganisations inorder to solve social anddevelopmental problems is controversial in somefields:sociology and political science, among others, debate the role of these organisations as statusquo and pacification institutions, and highlight their inadequacies and arbitrariness. For policymakers hoping to aid the poor, however, there are currently few viable options. Internationalreviews 11funding organisations place strictures on governments to reduce their share of social spending,while governments themselves are hard-pressed to balance their budgets. Formal social securitysystems are often lacking, covering a small percentage of the population, or the benefit systemsthemselves are inadequate. The vast numbers of self-employed and agricultural workers aregenerally excluded.Midgley et al. recognise these flaws in government social security in the Global South,and in response offer a compelling alternative. They argue that governments should collaboratewith and financially support grassroots efforts to furnish social security, a category that includesloans, pensions and life and health insurance. This solution is viewed not as the continuationof long-standingmethods of risk reduction, but as a new form of social security that transcendstraditional mutual aid, incorporating market and commercial techniques.The key argument of the book is that grassroots organisations have devised a number ofinnovative and successful methods for providing social security, but these fall short without thehelp of either private businesses or government. The book argues that government regulationsand linking NGOs (non-government organisations) to the commercial sector improve thefunctioning of these NGOs, ameliorating many of their questionable practices while extendingtheir welfare services. The politics of NGO effectiveness are acknowledged in the book inpassing, but relegated to the background. The authors focus practically instead on what can bedone to extend social welfare.NGOs specialising in micro-finance should move to micro-insurance, a change thatentails formalisation and often also organisational sponsorship. These two dynamics altergrassroots organisations, introducing set rules and formal structures. This transition to aformal organisation, the authors contend, subjecting it to the strictures and regulationsof government and commerce, improves the functioning of the NGO while retaining thecommunity connections that government andbusiness lack. Business can be enticed to linkwithgrassroots social security providers in cases where governments impose such involvement andwhere NGOs serve as ‘micro-agents’ or interlocutors for commercial companies, supplying thetime-consuming labour needed to connect with the grassroots in poor and rural communities.The goals of NGOs and private business do not always coincide, as the book notes for examplein the case of loan repayment. Business prioritises loan repayment over continued insurancecoverage, a policy that can cause policies to lapse unbeknownst to the policy holder. Thebook discusses policy solutions for such problems: in this case, linking loan repayments withpremiums, enabling the continuation of the insurance policy.Chapters 1 and 2 provide useful background on the development of social insurance andlocal mutual aid. Chapter 1 would aid students in understanding mutual aid, and Chapter 2explains how these organisations are deficient andneed tobe supplementedbymicro-insurance.The substance of the book is a series of detailed case studies of mutual aid experiences in India,the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Mongolia and Indonesia. The cases are detailed, andwould serve best for specialists or policy makers hoping to enact a scheme like the ones inthe book. The cases encompass institutions providing micro-insurance, micro-finance, healthinsurance and life insurance. Some of the general themes that emerge from the case studies arethe centrality of life insurance to the ability of poor families to manage risk and the usefulnessbut difficulty of including health insurance in the social security portfolio.Overall, the book provides useful examples and advice for countries and aid providers toimprove the lives of the poor.anne marie baylounyNaval Postgraduate School Monterey,Californiaambaylou@nps.edu

Book Review by Anne Marie Baylouny of Grassroots Social Security in Asia by James Midgley and Mitsuhiko Hosaka (eds.)

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Book Review by Anne Marie Baylouny of Grassroots Social Security in Asia by James Midgley and Mitsuhiko Hosaka (eds.)

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