Book review : Ulrich Becker and Anastasia Poulou (eds), European welfare state constitutions after the financial crisis (Oxford University Press 2020)

Abstract

In the wake of the financial and economic crisis of 2008, a distinct field of comparative constitutional law scholarship emerged to explore the interaction of the crisis with constitutions. Especially at the European level, the sovereign debt crisis gained much attention as a distinct lens for examining constitutional responses, reactions and transformations. At the same time, social rights scholarship began to provide a detailed account of welfare state reforms in the context of austerity programmes and financial assistance conditionality and the significant impact of these reforms on the enjoyment and realisation of social rights. Edited by Ulrich Becker and Anastasia Poulou, European Welfare State Constitutions after the Financial Crisis builds on these two streams of scholarship and combines the study of constitutions with that of welfare states in the context of the recent economic and sovereign debt crisis. The editors have succeeded in producing a volume that benefits from a comparative approach and offers important insights, both as a whole and as individual contributions.