Richard Sandbrook, Marc Edelman, Patrick Heller and Judith Teichman. <em>Social Democracy in the Global Periphery: Origins, Challenges, Prospects.</em> Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 300 pp., $34.99 paper.

This book is a useful resource.However, it is not the book that it claims to be.In keeping with the title, the authors present the text as a study of 'social democratic' states in developing countries or 'the global periphery'.As such, the analysis is supposed to respond both to neoliberals who still quote Thatcher that 'there is no alternative' to neoliberal policies and to political economists who argue that states have no meaningful autonomy left in a world where politics is increasingly constrained by an active, organized and powerful transnational capitalist class.Indeed, in the opening lines of the book, the authors insist that their contribution as social scientists is to consider, not just what is probable, but what is possible -to underscore "the often hidden opportunities for valued social change" (p.3) that lurk in any particular historical moment, including the present.Yet, the analyses are not (only) about social democratic states.Rather, the book considers a variety of welfare states in the global periphery, ranging from the social democratic to the classically liberal.In clear, well-written, even prose (no mean feat given four coauthors), the writers draw upon their collective research as political scientists, examining the cases of Kerala, Costa Rica, Mauritius, and Chile (after Pinochet).When compared with other middle and low-income countries, each has better-than-average health outcomes, including increased longevity, and better-than-average educational attainment, with all four cases boasting literacy rates of over 90%.More tenuously, the authors argue that all four cases feature "robust civil societies" (p.11) and have "advanced social security systems", including old age and some disability protection.If the four cases vary in important ways, notably in terms of population size, ethnic homogeneity, and the importance of the rural population, this variety, the authors argue, is analytically suggestive insofar as it implies that quite different peripheral nations and regions may still achieve some form of welfare state.Indeed, the main thrust of the authors' argument is that although the world periphery is marked by

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