In a world that is rapidly changing, increasingly connected and uncertain, there is a need to develop a shared applied policy analysis of welfare regimes around the globe. Research in Comparative and Global Social Policy is a series of books that addresses broad questions around how nation-states and transnational policy actors manage globally shared challenges. In so doing, the book series includes a wide array of contributions, which discuss comparative social policy history, development and reform within a broad international context. Initially conceived during a meeting of the UK Social Policy Association Executive Committee in 2016, the book series invites innovative research by leading experts on all world-regions and global social policy actors, and aims to fulfil the following objectives: it encourages cross-disciplinary approaches that develop theoretical frameworks reaching across individual world-regions and global actors; it seeks to provide evidence-based good practice examples that cross the bridge between academic research and practice; and not least, it aims to provide a platform in which a wide range of innovative methodological approaches, may it be national case studies, larger-N comparative studies or global social policy studies can be introduced to aid the evaluation, design and implementation of future social policies.

The topic of this monograph by Katharina Zimmermann is on one of the key issues in the heart of debates in many European countries at the moment – namely, the role of the European Union and the implementation of cohesion policies at the national level. Despite growing Euroscepticism, harmonisation of European social policies is progressing, as is evidenced by the introduction of the new European pillars of social rights which aims to deliver new and more effective rights for citizens across Europe. Zimmermann's book thus comes at a critical time to shed light on how European Social Funds help shape the implementation of local labour market policies, examining 18 detailed local case studies across six European countries. In this way, it speaks to some of the core aims of our book series by providing an in-depth examination of how supra-national/global actors affect local social policies – what we consider a relative undeveloped field. Zimmermann's contribution stands out in its ability to capture the different policy levels comprehensively. The book also contributes to the field methodologically, through the qualitative comparative analysis approach, to better capture the complexity of the implementation process and find patterns of different approaches made.