Queering Health: Critical Challenges to Normative Health and Healthcare edited by LaetitiaZeeman, KayAranda and AlecGrant. 2014: Herefordshire, UK, PCCS Books. ISBN: 978 1 906254 71 1

Abstract

models different from the Anglophone liberal countries. But the conclusions are ultimately quite critical as reality does not live up to these high hopes: European integration is conducive neither to an expanding welfare state nor to deliberative democratic processes. This finding is plausible, but should we really be disappointed? Is the welfare state expanding and deliberative democracy thriving in New Zealand and Norway? And is the EU really so off the mark when it supports devolution and outsourcing/privatisation of public services if elected governments, of different ideological leanings and with different welfare systems, inside and outside the EU, push for exactly these trends? Just because comparative welfare state scholars do not like any of this, often for good reason, this does not mean that the agenda is undemocratic. The disappointment, expressed in so much of EU scholarship, should make us think instead whether our conception of what links welfare states, democracy and European integration is appropriate. Just like the welfare state, the EU may be a novel attempt at making national democracy compatible with the demands of international (economic and political) integration. Both extend entitlements to outsiders and minority needs, neglected or even opposed by the popular consensus and majority representation. The best welfare systems share a problem-solving attitude to policymaking with the EU regulatory polity. In sum, both the welfare state and European integration by law may check and complement national democratic processes rather than be their mere continuation. It is to the credit of this volume that it makes us think about these fundamental relationships.