This book charts the changing and increasing demands for social welfare and the attempts by governments to contain and restructure social expenditures, focusing on seven EU states. These contradictory pressures are encapsulated in the phrase ‘squaring the welfare circle’, which was also the sub-title of an earlier text on the British welfare state from ‘the Kent School’ (George and Miller, 1994). The latter took a notably downbeat view of the social policy future in Britain, arguing that the Conservative reforms since 1979 had set in train a profound transformation from a liberal, collectivist to a residual, neo-liberal model of social welfare. In the new book, the editors maintain this view.