Abstract
Budapest: Central European University Press, 2003. 513, £16.95, ISBN 963 9241 39 3
Reviewer: JIRI PRIBAN (Cardiff University)
This book examines the history of political dissent in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland during the communist rule and the impact of dissident intellectuals and their ideas on current political theory. It is an elaborate and synthetic study which is divided into three parts: the first covers mainly historical events and milestones of struggle against communist totalitarianism; the second focuses on major figures of the dissident movement, such as Havel, Michnik and Konrád, and their political ideas; and the third analyses the role of these ideas in the current political theory, especially their influence on the concept of civil society.
The text separately analyses historical and intellectual developments in each of the countries. However, the overarching perspective of examining the dissident political tactics, ideas and their transformation into political theory connects different historical experiences of Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians and Poles and points to common features and ‘dilemmas of dissidence in East-Central Europe’. Unlike other studies in this field of political science, Barbara Falk takes dissident ideas seriously and shows their power and force in a particular ideological, social and political context. She is interested in what happened after those often highly speculative and abstract ideas were put into circulation inside and outside the dissident groups. She also addresses the problem of the limited impact of these ideas on political developments in Central Europe after the 1989 revolutionary changes.
This study is informative, balanced in its descriptive parts, and provides an original insight into the role of dissidents as committed public intellectuals. It is well researched and includes a remarkable number of details. It will be welcomed by all academics in the field of political history, theory and philosophy.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 254, £35.00, ISBN 0 19 925646 2
Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research, professional
Rating: **
Reviewer: RUTH SCURR (University of Cambridge)
Jacobinism, in this context, is not the revolutionary political movement that reached its apogee in the years of the Terror (1793–94) under the leadership of Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety. It is something more diffuse and capacious, variously defined in the essays collected here as a cluster of ideas, principles, values, myths, commitments or beliefs. Schnapper's essay makes the striking claim that ‘Jacobinism does not date from the Revolution’, seeing Jacobinism as part of a long tradition of French state-or nation-building, stretching back to the time of Philip the Fair. But for the most part, the contributors are concerned with Jacobinism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, where it played a central role in the struggle to define and stabilise the succession of French Republics inaugurated by the Revolution of 1789.
All contributors were friends and colleagues of the late Vincent Wright (1937–1999), whose important work on the French state led to the award of the Légion d'Honneur. Some of the essays build directly on Wright's own work: Machelon's examination of responses to the progress of political democracy in the prefectoral institution from 1870 to 1914; and Nord's excellent ‘Sciences-Po, from the Popular Front to the Liberation’. Other essays, inspired by the breadth and interdisciplinarity of Wright's scholarship, range more widely. Nabulsi situates functional, political and ideological differences inside the republican camp in 1870–71 within an overarching debate on just war dating back to the 1830s and earlier. Mény evokes key themes in ‘The Republic and its territory: the persistence and the adaptation of founding myths’. Unusual among foreign scholars of France, Wright did not hesitate to label himself a Jacobin. In this collection, those who were close to him shed valuable light on what he meant.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. 304, £30.00, ISBN 1 4039 6024 0
Readership: Undergraduates
Rating: ***
Reviewer: HILARY FOOTITT (University of Stirling)
Patrick McCarthy is well known for his work on politically committed French writers (Céline, Camus) and on the culture of Italian politics. In this book, he sets out to do two things: first, he wants to demonstrate how our knowledge of the twentieth century can be enhanced by bringing together political and literary history; and second, he aims to suggest the ways in which language shapes politics. His fundamental point is that there are links between the literary/cultural output of a particular period and the politics of the time – links which, he argues, are necessarily different at different political moments. In illustrating this, he covers an enormous amount of ground, with sections on, among others, Gide, Gramsci, Pasolini, Sartre, Orwell, Brecht, Silletoe, Loach, Heaney, Lampedusa, Levi and Céline. Whilst much of this narrative of politically committed literature has been examined in separate specialist volumes elsewhere, McCarthy has done a service in bringing the material together in a detailed and persuasive account.
In the more problematic area of assessing how language shapes politics, he uses the conceptual framework of storytelling, or ‘stolentelling’, setting examples of political discourse side by side with examples of literary writing. Whilst this approach can offer helpful insights, it does not engage with the very considerable body of detailed analysis of political discourse which scholars like Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Paul Chilton or Norman Fairclough have produced, nor with, as he admits, the theoretical contributions of postmodernism.
This book does not specifically advance debates on language and politics, but it does seek to bring together a wide range of relevant literary output from France, Italy, Germany, Ireland and the UK – and for this ambition alone, it could be a valuable cultural addition to undergraduate courses in European politics.
Birmingham: Birmingham University Press, 2003. 323, £19.95, ISBN 1 902459 2
Readership: Postgraduates, academic/research
Rating: ****
Reviewer: STEFAN WOLFF (University of Bath)
The opening paragraph of Jonathan's Grix's preface states that the ‘book is intended as a starting point for research undertaken both by students and experienced scholars, as an introduction to the key methodological approaches and debates in specific disciplines deling with Germany’ (p. i). Following his own introduction to social research methodology, Part I addresses different approaches in the fields of history (one chapter each on West Germany and East Germany) and culture (cultural studies per se and sociolinguistics). Part II is aimed at political scientists and economists, with two chapters on German and British political science, one chapter on the international relations (IR) approach to the study of contemporary Germany, another one on the debates on Germany as a European power, and a final one examining economic studies of Germany. A comprehensive bibliography and useful index complete the volume.
For political scientists, Part II is of greater interest. The two chapters I enjoyed most were Longhurst and Hyde-Price's analysis of how different IR approaches can contribute to the understanding of Germany's role in European and world politics, and Jeffery and Paterson's discussion of the debates on Germany's place in Europe, which is more or less an analysis of how German foreign policy can be, and has been, studied over the past decade. Both chapters provide the reader with excellent summaries of the methodological choices available, while at the same time discussing their advantages and disadvantages in the light of the relevant key texts.
The volume succeeds in delivering a comprehensive overview of ‘the key approaches to the study of contemporary Germany in the broad, traditional academic disciplines of social science’ (p. xii). It is an invaluable research guide for graduate students and established researchers alike.
London: Routledge, 2002. 160, £50.00, ISBN 0 415 27436 2
Readership: Undergraduates, advanced undergraduates, professional
Rating: ***
Reviewer: ERIKA HARRIS (University of Leeds)
Slovakia is a ‘perfectly acceptable small state that achieved as much, if not more, than could reasonably be expected from a new state with a population of little more than five million’ (p. 109), says the author of this small book with a great title. The book gives a sympathetic account of a country which made the escape from invisibility the main theme of its post-communist existence. Independent Slovakia became best known for its initial exclusion from the accession negotiations for the EU when it was deemed not to ‘fulfil in a satisfying manner the political conditions set by the European Council’ (the Commission, 1997). Now, having spectacularly caught up with the accession negotiations and entering into the EU in the first wave of the Eastern enlargement, Slovakia has shed some of its invisibility, but remains largely a country we still know little about. The question is whether this book helps to remedy this lack of knowledge about Slovakia.
The book provides a brief and, at times, superficial account of Slovakia's pre- and post-independence history, politics and economy. One must agree with Karen Henderson that given ‘the level of political contestation in every sphere’, the nascent democracy has performed well and Slovakia appears politically and economically stable enough to continue on its path to democratic consolidation. On the other hand, the book does not convey adequately the sense of Slovak politics and society which encapsulate the drama of Eastern and Central European history of the last century: the devastating consequences of communism, the difficulties of nation- and state-building in a multicultural society and the trials of a small state carving out a place for itself in the new world. It brings us closer to knowing something about Slovakia, but not near enough to understand it.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003. 202, £13.99, ISBN 0 7190 5421 4
Readership: Undergraduates
Rating: ****
Reviewer: CRAIG MCLEAN (University of Newcastle upon Tyne)
In this book, Geoffrey Roberts and Patricia Hogwood have focused on writing an accessible background account to the political systems of Western Europe and the concomitant changes taking place in these political systems. The book follows on from European Politics Today and is aimed at providing students with background information on the contemporary history of European countries. In order to achieve this, they have decided to condense the first two chapters of the book into the format of a dictionary. Respectively, these two chapters (or sections as they have named them) are titled ‘Events, groups and developments’ and ‘Biographies’. Following on from this are sections on ‘Abbreviations’, ‘Chronologies’ (where specific attention is paid to the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) and ‘Data relating to political systems’.
By and large, the authors succeed in their goals and have provided a lucid narrative on the political landscape of Western Europe. The ‘Events’ section concisely covers developments ranging from the Marshall Plan to the ‘Historikerstreit’. Similarly, the ‘Biographies’ and ‘chronologies’ sections are both strong and diverse. Perhaps the only significant criticism that could be raised against this book is that it does not go beyond the continuing East/West dichotomy that is associated with ‘Europe’. With the EU on the verge of enlarging to 25 member states, and with many of the candidate states hailing from the former ‘Eastern/Communist’ bloc, it may have been pertinent for them to draw attention to how the established parameters of framing ‘Europe’ have become much more fluid since the end of the cold war. That comment aside, this is a very good book that should be recommended to undergraduate students striving to broaden their understanding of European politics.
Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002. 304, £47.50, ISBN 0 333 79424 9
Reviewer: COLIN WARBRICK (University of Durham)
Professor Matláry was the Norwegian Foreign Secretary in the Christian Democrat interest from 1997 to 2000. Her book is a mix of her experiences in office and theory from her academic career. It address a vast field involving diplomacy, law, international institutions and the exercise of power.
Her approach is through regime theory and the instruments available in each regime to secure its objectives. Her thesis is that values matter in international relations and that they matter not just to those actors strongly committed to them, but also to others for instrumental reasons, such as economic or security interests. She is concerned with three international organisation-centred regimes – the Council of Europe (CoE), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union (EU). She is an enthusiast for the processes of the OSCE and recognises the real power available to the EU, but she is pessimistic about the future of the CoE. She sees the European Court of Human Rights as likely to collapse under the weight of cases, but is, in any event, conscious of the limits of the judicial vindication of single instances of violations of human rights. What she is concerned about are structural causes which result in the denial of, or thwart, the enjoyment of human rights on a grand scale. Here, the OSCE's expertise and resources give it the advantage, first in its capacity to monitor situations in the field and then to enlist political support for its proposals. Though with different degress of concern for applicant, potential applicant and non-applicant states, she sees the EU as developing its human rights policies and being in the position to back them up with incentives and with sanctions, in much the same manner as a national state.
There is a clarity and generality to this account which will make it accessible to non-international relations specialists, but the complexity of the problems and the overlapping nature of the regimes require a more sustained analysis if there is to be a real contribution to regime theory or a practical contribution to the furtherance of the human rights project in Europe.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 230, £45.00, ISBN 0 521 82090 1
Readership: Academic/research
Rating: ****
Reviewer: ASTRID HEDIN (Uppsala University)
Peter Caldwell has written a homage to early East German communist intellectuals. Already by the mid-1950s, party academics like Behrens and Bloch had identified ‘many of the most important problems of state socialism’ – ‘structural flaws’ of a centrally planned economy (pp. 12, 187). ‘In none of these cases could the Soviet Union offer a comparable thinker’ (p. 4). However, after the Hungarian uprising in 1956, these faithful communists were labelled ‘revisionist’ and their questioning quashed.
Caldwell reviews the content of the revisionist writings. At the centre of his intellectual history of state planning in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) lies the problem of information, theoretically described as the ‘paradox of consciousness’ inherent to Marxist–Leninist ideology. The economist Fritz Behrens suggested solving some of the information problems by decentralizing firm management (chapter 1). His work was branded as revisionist and he was demoted. Similarly, the legal theorist Hermann Klenner, pro-rector of the Humboldt University, advocated decentralization of planning and a system of legal contracts that would be protected from the whims of central planners (chapter 2). Administrative law was abolished as an academic field and Klenner sent to work as mayor of a small town close to the Polish border.
In his renowned book, The Principle of Hope, the philosopher Ernst Bloch maintained that the party dictatorship was only a means to the metaphysical aim of Marxism to end all dictatorships (chapter 3). Bloch was accused of ‘idealism’, subjected to a campaign and forced into early retirement. When on travel in West Germany in 1961, he decided to stay. In the 1970s, other party intellectuals sought to revive some of the early revisionist themes by using the depoliticized language of cybernetics (chapter 4). Caldwell's main and noteworthy thesis is that these and other later attempts never went beyond the quality of the original revisionist thinking. Less convincing is his argument that the quality of the East German revisionist thought should somehow imply a weakening of ‘the triumphalist interpretation of 1989 as the victory of capitalism’ (p. 194).
Put into this context, the revisionist debate on the ‘paradox of consciousness’ that Caldwell reviews reads as a euphemism for the inefficiency of tyranny. A party meeting transcript from 1948 worries that the ‘few powerful and punchy comrades’ like Behrens were ‘totally overstrained’ by the process of gaining control over the universities (Kowalczuk, p. 241).
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 295, £15.99, ISBN 0 19 878259 4
Readership: Undergraduates, academic/research
Rating: *****
Reviewer: CRAIG McLEAN (University of Newcastle upon Tyne)
Manfred Schmidt focuses on the political institutions of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). He gives his full attention to the constitutional foundations of the FRG, the executive, parliament, the judiciary, political leadership and the electoral system and, finally, continuity and discontinuity before and after German reunification. He employs a political-institutionalist approach throughout the book, and this leads him to conclude that despite lingering difficulties (such as Germany's rigid labour market and the ‘wall in the mind’), the FRG has nevertheless performed well. Although written for students and scholars of political science, he has attempted to produce a work that is accessible to the widest possible audience.
Schmidt's book performs well in comparison to other literature on the subject, and he has succeeded in authoring a well-informed and readable work. He intelligently compares the contemporary institutions of the FRG to both those of the socialist East and those of pre-1945 Germany, as well as occasionally highlighting commonalties and differences to institutions in other countries. Furthermore, his access to source material in the original language will highlight many key debates for those readers who are unfamiliar with German. The book could have been improved by perhaps discussing how the Constitutional Court becomes involved in the political process by banning the Socialist Reich Party and the current controversy regarding the NPD (National Democratic Party of Germany). Although Schmidt comes tantalisingly close to doing this (pp. 119, 137), he might have gone further by explaining how the accompanying restrictive processes compare with other countries. This could have given an interesting caveat into how the German political system has come to terms with the past. On balance, however, this is an excellent publication that should be recommended to those with an interest in the political institutions of the FRG.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. 310, £52.50, ISBN 1 4039 0359 X
Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates
Rating: ***
Reviewer: CHRISTOPHER REYNOLDS (Technische Universität München)
In their introductory chapters, the editors of this volume explain that the task before their contributors is to assess the response of national ministries of foreign affairs (MFAs) to the process of European integration. They argue that, despite claims to the contrary, the role of MFAs has been largely redefined rather than reduced and can be best understood as one of ‘boundary spanners’, using their expertise to mediate and (often) coordinate relations between the European, national and, in some cases, sub-national levels of governance. And yet while the editors do an excellent job of raising pertinent questions regarding the challenges this poses, in Spence's case with particular reference to the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy, the reader is likely to be disappointed at the varying value of the individual country chapters. Notwithstanding the fact that chapters on Greece and Luxembourg are missing, several of the contributions essentially only examine the evolution of national foreign policies and structures, rather than genuinely attempt to gauge the impact of so-called ‘Europeanisation’. However, the stronger chapters, such as those on Denmark, France, Germany and Sweden, do offer comprehensive insights into the effect of EU membership upon national foreign-policy-making apparatus and of MFAs coping to various degrees with the imperatives of both horizontal and vertical coordination of their respective European policies and the challenges of, for example, modernisation and globalisation. Even here, though, more attention could have been paid to the role of MFAs in the EU's Intergovernmental Conferences or rotating six-month presidencies, and a further chapter on issues for the candidate member states would have been of great interest. The result is therefore a valuable – but by no means comprehensive – study worthy of selective reading.
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. 348, £52.50, ISBN 0 7546 1936 2
Readership: Postgraduates, academic/research
Rating: **
Reviewer: NATALIA LETKI (Nuffield College, Oxford)
Martin Åberg and Mikael Sandberg aim to explain the complex web of relations between individuals' attitudes, cultural and historical heritage and the success of political reforms by means of survey data analysis and historical and institutional research on the cities of Wroclaw (Poland) and L'viv (Ukraine).
The historical and institutional analyses are the strengths of the book. Reconstruction of the nineteenth-century participation models as well as political behaviour during and after communism are careful and detailed. The theoretical diagnosis of the possible sources of social and political (dis)trust in the post-communist states and their link with new democracy are interesting and plausible. Paradoxically, the analysis of social capital is the main weakness of the book, as it ignores a significant proportion of literature on social and political capital, and the definitions of key concepts and specifications of links between them are imprecise (are ‘local leaders’ trust in their citizens' (p. 34) or ‘relationship between you and the police’ (p. 27) parts of the concept?) The analyses of survey data meant to support the theoretical propositions do not reflect the complexity of the researched issue and suffer from methodological problems, and the research design and choice of case studies are not convincing: to investigate the path dependencies in development of social and political capital, they focus on two cities with ‘discontinued’ history where populations were almost entirely replaced after the Second World War (empirical attempts to address this issue are, at best, imperfect).
While the theoretical propositions and hypotheses are attractive, their empirical tests are not thorough enough to be persuasive. The book will be of interest to area specialists looking for details from the political history of these regions of Poland and the Ukraine, but only of limited use to those interested in the link between social capital and democratisation.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002. 271, £45.00, ISBN 0 7190 6100 8
Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research
Rating: ****
Reviewer: FRANÇOISE BOUCEK (London School of Economics)
This volume aims to provide a comprehensive account of the Italian general election of 2001 in the same way as the The British General Election series. That election was historically significant, because it was the first in post-war Italy to produce a clear majority in both legislative chambers, formed by Berlusconi's centre-right coalition ‘Casa delle Liberta’ (House of Freedoms).
Part 1 looks at recent institutional and government changes (Furlong) and at the political and economic context of the election, with Pasquino drawing attention to the left's failure to capitalise on the advantages of incumbency, such as the provision of a stable economy (which Capriati examines in detail in chapter 3). Part 2 explains the configurations and electoral strategies of the main protagonists. Rose stresses the weakness of the ‘Ulivo’ alliance (parties of the centre-left) in securing electoral pacts; Biorcio analyses Casa delle Liberta's changes of strategies and the nature of its electoral support; and Donovan examines the complex processes of alliance formation since the collapse of Italy's so-called ‘First Republic’ (although constitutional reform efforts have so far failed to create a second republic). Part 3 confirms that personalities rather than issues dominated the media campaign, and Part 4 explains the outcome of the election. Looking at the nature and composition of the new parliament, Verzichelli and Zucchini conclude that slow incremental change is in progress but that the gradual bipolarisation of the party system since electoral reform was introduced in 1994 does not necessarily mean stability.
It doesn't quite match Bartolini and Mair's brilliant study of the 1996 general election in terms of scope and depth, but it provides a good analysis of an eventful general election – although it still leaves this reader puzzling out why a near majority of Italians chose to entrust prime ministerial power for the second time to a man described as ‘unfit to govern’ (The Economist) and ‘a danger to democracy’. It is disappointing that after three elections held under the new mixed electoral system, the researcher still can't get a breakdown of vote and seat figures for individual parties (as opposed to electoral cartels) for the 75 per cent plurality area, making it impossible to calculate ‘number of parties’ measures accurately.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 220, £17.95, ISBN 0 521 01152 3
Readership: Postgraduates, academic/research, professional
Rating: *****
Reviewer: PETR KOPECKÝ (Institute of Social Studies, The Hague)
This book is a major contribution to both the literature on the causes and consequences of political change in the post-communist world and the debate about the role of civil society in the process of democratization. It addresses the weakness of civil society in the post-communist region. Using survey data, Marc Morjé Howard first shows that participation in voluntary organizations in the post-communist countries is distinctly lower in comparison to established democracies and other post-authoritarian states. He then draws upon comparative data (including opinion polls and his own in-depth interviews) from East Germany and Russia to demonstrate that the weakness of civil society in these countries is directly related to the legacies of the previous regimes, most notably citizens' mistrust of organizations and the existence of private and informal networks within these societies. In contrast to other studies of the region, he thus emphasizes abiding social and cultural similarities between the post-communist countries. However, unlike many other accounts, he also posits that it is the quality of democracy, rather than its stability or consolidation, that is at stake as a result of civil society weakeness. Moreover, the book looks at organizational membership as the main indicator of the strength or weakensss of civil society. By doing so, he moves away, refreshingly, from approaches that merely count the number of voluntary organizations. However, it also means that he remains wedded to the more traditional conception of civil society and thus screens off other potentially important elements of associational life, such as periodic public protest. Despite this reservation, the book is undoubtedly the most authoritative account of its kind to date. Its conclusion represents one of the most balanced and interesting interpretations of the effects of low levels of participation in the voluntary sector on post-communist democracy.
Europe
New books received
Rudy B. Andeweg and Galen A. Irwin (2002) Governance and Politics of the Netherlands. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 264, £16.99, ISBN 0 333 96157 9
Tony Atkinson, Bea Cantillon, Eric Marlier and Brian Nolan (2002) Social Indicators: the EU and social inclusion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 256, £45.00, ISBN 0 19 925349 8
Peter R. Baehr, Monique C. Castermans-Holleman and Fred Grünfeld (2002) Human Rights in the Foreign Policy of the Netherlands. Antwerp: Intersentia, 262, €49.00, ISBN 905095221 6
Belinda Brown (2003) The Private Revolution: women in the Polish underground movement. London: Hera Trust, 166, £9.99, ISBN 0 9523529 23
Michelle Cini (2003) European Union Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 450, £17.99, ISBN 0 19 924836 2
Kenneth Dyson (ed.) (2002) European States and the Euro: Europeanization, variation, and convergence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 430, £45.00, ISBN 0 19 925026 X
Manfred Elsig (2002) The EU's Common Commercial Policy: institutions, interests and ideas. Aldershot: Ashgate, 210, £47.50, ISBN 0 7546 3227 X
Martin Elvins (2003) Anti-Drugs Policies of The European Union: transnational decision-making and the politics of expertise. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 226, £45.00, ISBN 0 333 98213 4
Kjell Engelbrekt (2002) Security Policy Reorientation in Peripheral Europe: a comparative-perspectivist approach. Aldershot: Ashgate, 314, £45.00, ISBN 0 7546 3068 4
Jocelyn Evans (ed.) (2003) The French Party System. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 218, £14.99, ISBN 0 7190 6120 2
Mark Gilbert (2003) Surpassing Realism: The Politics of European Integration since 1945. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 276, £20.95, ISBN0 7425 1914 7
Justin Greenwood (ed.) (2003) The Challenge of Change in EU Business Associations. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian, 263, £50.00, ISBN 1 4039 0653 x
Tamar L. Gutner (2002) Banking on the Environment: multilateral development banks and their environmental performance in Central and Eastern Europe. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 280, £16.50, ISBN 0 262 57159 5
Graeme Hayes (2002) Environmental Protest and the State in France. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 258, £47.50, ISBN 0 333 99043 9
Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Ewa Kulesza and Annette Legutke (eds) (2002) The State of Political Science in Central and Eastern Europe. Berlin: Edition Sigma, 331, €22.90, ISBN 3 89404 216 8
Thomas Kselman and Joseph A. Buttigieg (eds) (2003) European Christian Democracy: historical legacies and comparative perspectives. Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 349, $18.00, ISBN 0 268 02276 3
Patrick Le Galès (2002) European Cities: social conflicts and governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 328, £50.00, ISBN 0 19 924357 3
Johan Lembke (2002) Competition for Technological Leadership: EU policy for high technology. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 327, £65.00, ISBN 1 84064 792 2
Mairi Maclean (2002) Economic Management and French Business: from de Gaulle to Chirac. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 308, £52.50, ISBN 0 333 76148 0
Neil McNaughton (2003) Understanding British and European Political Issues: a guide for A2 politics students. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 283, £9.99, ISBN 0 7190 6245 4
Markus M. Müller (2003) The New Regulatory State in Germany. Birmingham: University of Birmingham Press, 258, £19.95, ISBN 0 902459 19 9
António Nóvoa and Martin Lawn (eds) (2002) Fabricating Europe: the formation of an education space. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 163, £44.00, ISBN 1 4020 0801 5
Neill Nugent, William E. Paterson and Vincent Wright (eds) (2003) The European Union: readings on the theory and practice of European integration. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 378, ISBN 1 4039 0422 7
George Pagoulatos (2003) Greece's New Political Economy: state, finance and growth from postwar to EMU. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 271, £50.00, ISBN 0 333 75277 5
Philip Raines (ed.) (2002) Cluster Development and Policy. Aldershot: Ashgate, 202, £42.50, ISBN 0 7546 1887 0
Anne Sa'adah (2003) Contemporary France: a democratic education. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 352, £19.95, ISBN 0 7425 0198 1
Vivien A. Schmidt (2002) The Futures of European Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 371, £12.99, ISBN 0 19 925368 4
Raju G. C. Thomas (2003) Yugoslavia Unravelled: sovereignty, self-determination, intervention. Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 386, £65.00, ISBN 0 7391 0517 5
Frank B. Tipton (2003) A History of Modern Germany since 1815. London: Continuum, 730, £29.99, ISBN 0 8264 4910 7
Loukas Tsoukalis (2003) What Kind of Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 240, £25.00, ISBN 0 19 926666 2
Alex Warleigh (2003) Democracy in the European Union. London: Sage, 155, $29.95, ISBN 0 7619 7281 1
J. H. H Weiler, Iain Begg and John Peterson (eds) (2003) Integrating in an Expanding European Union. Oxford: Blackwell, 418, £23.99, ISBN 1 405 112328
Wolfgang Wessels, Andreas Maurer and Jürgen Mittag (eds) (2003) Fifteen into One? The European Union and its member states. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 496, £17.99, ISBN 0 7190 5849 X
Alasdair R. Young (2002) Extending European Cooperation: the European Union and the ‘new’ international trade agenda. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 218, £15.99, ISBN 0 7190 6272 1