The 2008 global economic crisis has led to a new age of austerity, based more on politics than economics, which threatens to undermine the very foundations of the welfare state. However, as resistance to the logic of austerity grows, this important book argues that there is still room for optimism.

Introduction: social policy in the age of austerity ~ Kevin Farnsworth and Zoë Irving; Austerity: more than the sum of its parts ~ Kevin Farnsworth and Zoë Irving; Conventional wisdom on government austerity: UK politics since the 1920s ~ Michael Hill;? The economics of austerity ~ Stephen Mcbride; Neoliberalism, finance-dominated accumulation and enduring austerity: a cultural political economy perspective ~ Bob Jessop;? Alternatives to austerity ~ Dexter Whitfield and John Spoehr; Crisis, convulsion and the welfare state ~ Frances Fox-Piven and Lorraine Minnite; Conclusion: a new politics of welfare ~ Kevin Farnsworth and Zoë Irving.

"[The editors] are tackling an important agenda when they bring together a range of contributions on different aspects of the idea and practice of austerity." Citizen's Income Newsletter "This is sure to be an influential book on the contemporary literature on the politics of austerity. Featuring insightful contributions by some of the foremost theorists in social policy, the book offers a remarkably powerful analysis of governments' recent overhauls of social policies." Dr Lavinia Mitton, University of Kent "A timely, thought-provoking collection of critical scholarship which helps to better understand the ideology, politics and economics of austerity in contemporary welfare states and presents the reader with alternatives to the standard policy prescriptions of today." Professor Peter Starke, University of Southern Denmark