Paul Henman lectures in social policy at the University of Queensland, Australia. He has a long-standing interest in the inter-relationship between policy making, public administration and new information technologies. Menno Fenger is Assistant Professor in Public Administration at Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His research focuses on stability and change in public policy, specifically in the field of social policy.

• Introduction: Administering wefare reform ~ Menno Fenger and Paul Henman; Welfare reform as governance reform: the prospects of governmentality perspective ~ Paul Henman; Part One: Participants: reforming the agents of welfare delivery; State-third sector partnership frameworks: from administration to participation ~ Deena White; Shifts in welfare governance: the state, market and non-profit sector in four European countries ~ Menno Fenger; From charity to 'not for profit': changes in the role and structure of voluntary social service agencies ~ Jo Barnes; Part Two: Practices: the welfare governance of street-level practices; Ending welfare as we know it: welfare reform in the United States ~ Joel F. Handler; The new governance of Australian welfare: street-level contigencies ~ Cosmo Howard; The administration of transformation: a case study of implementing welfare reform in the UK ~ Sharon Wright; Part Three: Processes: the changing spaces of welfare governance; Administering global welfare: public management, governance and the new role of INGOs ~ Gaby Ramia; The fight against unemployment as a main concern of European social policy: the implications of a new, local-level approach ~ Carla Valadas; From government fragmentation to local governance: welfare reforms and lost opportunities in Italy ~ Yuri Kazepov and Angela Genova; Administering welfare reforms: reflections ~ Paul Henman and Menno Fenger.

"This book provides interesting international comparative data and stresses very convincingly the need to study the transformations in welfare governance and administration in order to understand its role in the nature, practices and effects of the welfare state. It presents a promising research agenda." Journal of Contemporary European Research, Vol 4:1 2007