Actively seeking work? : the politics of unemployment and welfare policy in the United States and Great Britain /

King (politics, St. John's College, Oxford Univ.) provides an analysis of comparative programs, policies, and institutions for work and welfare in the UK and the US. Readers receive not only a comprehensive review (with complete notes, bibliography, and comparative tables) of work-welfare but also they receive interesting evidences of how the two systems influenced each other. There are also interesting contrasts of systems of models that promote social programs for the middle class as opposed to programs that are means-tested or used as safety nets. King traces the development and, later, the establishment of labor exchanges "with unimpressive placement record" in the two nations in the context of work-welfare programs. The author emphasizes the political connections "which demonstrate the resilience of the core institutional and ideological elements of British and American work-welfare policies." These work-welfare programs have been supported by conservative, neoliberal, and new right political groups. This is an excellent political treatise. For upper-division undergraduates studying social/political policy and for graduate research audiences, particularly for students of political institutions and public policy. F. W. Musgrave; Ithaca College