Abstract
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. 279, £50.00, ISBN 0 19 9275521
Readership: Postgraduates, academic/research
Rating: ****
Reviewer: AGUSTíN JOSÉ MENÉNDEZ (Universidad de León)
This tight and well-argued monograph aims at explaining and reconstructing the role played by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the process of European integration. Stone Sweet claims that the ECJ has pursued a consistent interpretation of the founding treaties as the material constitution of the European Union (EU). This has been gradually accepted by national and European political actors, thanks to the strategic use that the ECJ made of its condition of ‘trustee’ of the member states in the application of EU law, as well as of its treaty-based review powers. The ECJ rendered evident to national judges (through the preliminary reference mechanism) as well as economic and social actors (by means of granting them European rights) that they had much to gain in accepting the constitutional status of EU law and, in the process, the authority of the ECJ itself. This is documented in chapters 2 to 5, with the help of (1) the qualitative reconstruction of the case law of the Court on what concerns the constitutional status of EU law, free movement of goods, sex discrimination and environmental protection, as well as of (2) the quantitative analysis of the case load of the Court in view of statistics reflecting supranational law-production and the growth of transnational society. In doing so, the monograph speaks at the same time to the arguments put forward by legal and political scholars in the field. The book concludes that the case law of the ECJ frames extensively intergovernmental decision-making, to the point of allegedly proving wrong intergovernmental theories of European integration, especially liberal intergovernmentalism. A serious flaw of this rich and thoroughly researched piece is that it accepts a flat account of judicial discretion, according to which law is fundamentally indeterminate; this renders facile assigning a central causal role to the ECJ in the process of European integration.
London: Routledge, 2004. 224, £70.00, ISBN 0 415 34067 5
Readership: Postgraduates, academic/research
Rating: ***
Reviewer: FERNANDO LOSADA FRAGA (Instituto Universitario de Investigación Ortega y Gasset)
Among the many books that will analyse the moments of the European Union's constitutional process, this one focuses on the draft treaty presented, as a result of its works, by the European Convention on June 2003. The contributions edited in this volume do this from a theoretical and abstract perspective – federalism and its preconditions (Philippe C. Schmitter; David McKay), multinational polity (Peter A. Kraus), constitutional process (Richard Bellamy and Justus Schönlau), conceptions of freedom (Lynn Dobson), role of the judiciary (Roberto Gargarella) – and sometimes from a more concrete one, studying punctual but transcendental articles of the draft treaty – mention of God in the preamble (Tore Vincents Olsen), open method of coordination (Myrto Tsakatika), representative or participatory democracy (Stijn Smismans), transparency (Daniel Naurin), Charter of Rights (Claudia Attucci).
Accordingly, with this approach, the book will satisfy the expectations of its readers – it is mainly aimed at, and highly recommended to, researchers and academic readers, as well as at postgraduates. Some of them, however, would miss some deeper reflections about foreign policy or about one of the most important innovations of the draft treaty: the participation of national parliaments in the Community's decision-making process, monitoring the application of the subsidiary principle – just studied in passant. In spite of these gaps, the book remains interesting because of the importance of the subjects analysed and their theoretical relevance, whatever the final result of the European constitutional process might be.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. 175, £12.99, ISBN 0 7190 6002 8
Readership: Undergraduates, advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research, professional
Rating: ****
Reviewer: DAVID J. GALBREATH (University of Aberdeen)
Rethinking European Union Foreign Policy is a much needed theoretical examination of how we understand the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the European Union (EU). Traditionally, research on the CFSP has produced the comment of ‘pre-theoretic’. This well-edited collection goes a long way in reassessing this judgement. Using a largely constructivist view, the authors apply traditional and non-traditional approaches to the EU's foreign policy-making and its role in the international system. The book itself is set within the question of whether or not the study of the CFSP lies within ‘international relations or European integration’, with the expected conclusion that it can be seen from both angles.
Several theoretical applications are taken into consideration. First, CFSP is examined within the IR–Integration debate, confronting the ‘sui generis problem’. The argument presented here is that integration theory goes furthest in confronting the problem. Second, CFSP is seen through the view of traditional foreign-policy analysis. In particular, the authors answer affirmatively whether we can view EU CFSP in the same way as traditional foreign policy. Third, a larger constructivist approach is taken with the application of discourse theory as well as highlighting the role of ‘interests, institutions and identities’. These chapters answer the questions of how the CFSP is made and who the primary actors are within the policy process. Finally, the book concludes by looking at the ‘nuts and bolts’ and raison d'être of the EU's CFSP. Specifically, the policy area of arms export controls is highlighted. The book does illuminate the possibility for the theoretical conceptualisation of the EU as a player in the international system. It is hoped that what the authors have done here is only the beginning of things to come.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 287, £45.00, ISBN 0 521 83359 0
Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research, professional
Rating: *****
Reviewer: MICHAEL J. STEFFENS (University of Sheffield)
In this latest contribution to the debate on European Union (EU) and NATO enlargement, Jacoby makes a convincing case for the application of new institutionalist theory alongside the well-established concept of emulation. The book looks at health care, consumer protection, regional policy and agriculture as case studies on EU enlargement. It also analyses civilian control of the military and military professionalisation in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland with regards to NATO enlargement. Given the rich amount of empirical evidence that is contained within the four chapters on these policy areas, it is remarkable that the author gave equal attention and space to theory. He offers not only a unique take on emulation, which most other scholars would simply describe as policy transfer or diffusion, but also a synthesis between different institutionalisms, backed by empirical data. After setting out the empirical cases, the author devotes two chapters to the testing of three hypotheses derived from rational choice, historical and sociological institutionalism. This creates a convincing link between the empirical research and these approaches. The arguments laid out in this monograph can hardly be ignored by scholars studying the enlargement of international organisations (IOs). The author opts to avoid familiar accounts of policy transfer or diffusion and instead analyses his cases from the perspective of modes and outcomes of emulation. He assumes that emulation takes on either less voluntary or more voluntary modes depending on the IO's institutional demands, and in a second step, the choices of the applicants' governments are decisive. The outcomes of the emulation process rely on the rule density that derives from the IO's legislation or agreements, and again in a second instance, on the density of actors in the applicant countries. A very valuable read indeed.
Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2004. 266, £22.95, ISBN 0 262 02566 3
Readership: Postgraduates, academic/research
Rating: **
Reviewer: AGUSTíN JOSÉ MENÉNDEZ (Universidad de León)
This edited volume aims at both discussing the substantive contents of the Constitutional Treaty of the European Union (EU) and figuring out how it could be made to work (p. xiii). More precisely, it focuses on the efficient constitutional design of institutions and decision-making procedures, from the division of powers to the design of law-making procedures. Thus, the collection could not be more topical, as such issues are central in the present European constitution-making process. Some chapters make lasting contributions to the debate. Hix, Noury and Roland (chapter 6) use extensive data on voting patterns in the European Parliament to support the idea of the election of the European Commission by an electoral college of national parliamentarians, while Feld and Kirchgässner (chapter 9) put forward a nuanced defence of constitutional referenda and popular initiatives in the EU. In contrast, other chapters reveal a certain ignorance of the present law and politics of the EU. This is especially the case of the contribution of Müeller on citizenship and rights (chapter 4). His argument is hampered by his assumption that the Constitutional Treaty would result in radical departures such as a new system of fundamental-rights protection or the granting of the right to vote in local elections to European citizens residing in another member state. However, the catalogue of rights of the Constitutional Treaty basically consolidates the case law that has been elaborated since 1970, while the above-mentioned right to vote has been in the books since 1993.
It must be added that the authors seem to have closed their chapters in the first months of 2003 and thus were only able to refer to the very preliminary drafts of the Constitutional Treaty, finally agreed in June 2004. This inevitably leaves some of the arguments dead-born from the press, and renders it clear that this collection will fail to leave an indelible mark in the (fast growing) literature.
MAKING A EUROPEAN WELFARE STATE? convergences and conflicts over European social policy by
Cambridge MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 162, £17.99, ISBN 1 405 121165
Readership: Academic/research
Rating: **
Reviewer: BASAK KOYUNCU KING (No Affiliation)
This collection of essays analyses to which extent welfare policies are converging or diverging in the European Union (EU). It argues that EU policy-making promotes social intervention to strengthen the market economy. Therefore, EU engagement in social policy concentrates mainly on the establishment of a competitive labour market rather than promoting public health, combating racial discrimination or promoting workers' rights. The book utilises theoretical and cross-national examination of developments at the European level and analyses case studies of particular policy areas and regional developments. It looks at different approaches to policy convergence and its quantitative evaluation in Europe; the welfare state in post-industrial societies; German and Finnish pension policies; Primary Health Care; disability policies; labour market changes in France and the UK; anti-poverty policies in the South; and the welfare state in Bulgaria and Romania. The identification of the classical welfare state definition with EU social policy, despite differences in their coverage, creates a conceptual confusion and an ambiguous argument. Redefining the welfare state by drawing upon commonalities between the welfare state and EU social policy would have provided a more coherent analysis.
Although the book established a valuable theoretical framework by discussing liberalism versus interventionism underpinning EU social policy, the case studies demonstrate convergences or divergences in EU social policy that as an argument is not strongly linked to this theoretical framework. An analytical categorisation of the EU member states in terms of their social policies, including sub-policy issues (that is, working conditions, gender, racial discrimination) would have been informative for the reader. The book omits any reference to the New Employment Strategy, although this is an important step to EU convergence, not only in quantitative employment targets but also in social inclusion benchmarks. Despite its fragmented arguments, the book is well written and easy to follow for the reader.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 228, £50.00, ISBN 1 4039 1632 2
Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research
Rating: ***
Reviewer: OLGA DEMETRIOU (St Peter's College, Oxford University)
This is a worthwhile addition to studies of the Cyprus conflict that situate it within the context of European Union (EU) enlargement. Christou argues that while analyses of the EU's conflict-solving capacities have tended to concentrate on the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), it is the EU's ‘power of attraction’ (of prospective members), under the ‘soft’ policy pillar, that has been most conducive to positive developments in the Cyprus case. The first chapter offers an interesting discussion of the relations between CFSP and the EU's involvement in Cyprus. The following two chapters provide a background on the Cyprus problem and the impact of the enlargement process. The next two assess the EU's ‘power of attraction’ by examining the views of political actors in Cyprus and Turkey. The penultimate chapter focuses on the clearest example of how the EU could ‘catalyse’ a solution to the political problem: providing a reason to the interested parties to respond more positively than they had done thus far to United Nations (UN) efforts to broker a solution.
Overall, the discussion is politically well balanced, but the analysis is unfortunately badly timed: the book presumably went to print around the time of the referendum, in which the Greek-Cypriots rejected the final UN-proposed plan. This development inevitably has repercussions for the ‘power of attraction’ thesis and leaves Christou's reader searching for some discussion in this direction. In its current form, the book ends with a harsh critique of the intransigent stance of the Turkish-Cypriot leadership, which in retrospect sounds rather ironic. All the more frustrating is the author's indication that some thoughts on the final-stage intransigence of the Greek-Cypriots side might have been formulated but never made it to the printers. Yet, the book still provides a strong case-study illustration of the need for more theoretical work on the EU's power to impact conflicts outside the confines of the CFSP.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 385, £18.99, ISBN 0 521 54363 0
Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research
Rating: ****
Reviewer: MICHAEL J. STEFFENS (University of Sheffield)
This collection gathers a number of valuable contributions on the economic governance of the European Union (EU). The book explores the effects of economic and monetary union (EMU) on a number of member states and the EU itself. It is divided into 13 chapters, each analyzing, in the editors' words, ‘the interaction between monetary union and the domestic politics of social model change until now’ (p. 189). The individual chapters are based on the assumption that frictions between monetary politics at the EU level and social policy at the domestic level are likely to occur while EMU proceeds. According to the editors, national social policies have remained immune to change despite the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), which restricts government budget deficits to a maximum of 3 percent and foresees balanced budgets in the medium term. Apart from Britain, neither rising levels of high unemployment nor economic stagnation have led governments to introduce radical changes in social policies. This view seems empirically unfounded, given that Denmark's labour market is more flexible than Britain's, and Germany's corporate tax rate lies 6 percent below that of the UK. In addition, recent changes to labour market regulations in Germany are substantial and far-reaching. In 2004, the number of people starting up businesses has risen by 267 percent in comparison with the preceding year – a direct result of a law introduced in 2003. Although structural reforms were postponed in many European capitals, because of an upsurge in the economic cycle, many countries now seem to have come around to introducing significant changes. These, admittedly more recent changes, are not adequately reflected in the volume. However, even if one might disagree with some of the generalisations, this collection offers substantial empirical and theoretical insights on the chosen topic.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 274, £45.00, ISBN 0 521 83253 5
Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research
Rating: ****
Reviewer: FERNANDO LOSADA FRAGA (Instituto Universitario de Investigación Ortega y Gasset)
The main object of Jupille's book is to discern ‘why, when, how, and with what effects do actors attempt to influence their institutional environment’ (p. 1) – in other words, when they play procedural instead of substantive politics. He soon proposes a theoretical answer: procedural politics (‘everyday politics with respect to rules’, p. 2) is possible if there are institutional or procedural alternatives (jurisdictional ambiguity) and if actors can foresee an increase of their influence on the institutional environment. Departing from this point, Jupille contextualises his analysis at the European Union (EU), a polity in formation whose characteristics fix well with those preconditions, because the decision-making process depends on the legal basis of each subject, and because its institutions are autonomous enough to seek to maximise their influence (or ‘power’).
In a very well-entrenched book, Jupille develops first his theoretical construction and then tries to apply it to real cases (these are well-selected empirical cases, because environmental politics and CAP are detected respectively as the most favourable and the most resistant fields to procedural politics). The author empirically demonstrates how procedural politics work, although sometimes theory does not fix well with reality. That is the main objection to Jupille's theoretical construction: it could be the sole theory capable of explaining how actors play their role when those preconditions exist, but it is not the only one that can do so in general circumstances. Finally, we must recognise that this book opens the way to new research on European policy-making aimed at applying procedural political theory to the main decisions of EU institutions in all fields, in order to prove Jupille's theory right or wrong. So it will not be the last time we hear about procedural politics.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. 252, £47.50, ISBN 0 7190 6137 7
Readership: Advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, academic/research
Rating: ****
Reviewer: LEE MCGOWAN (Queen's University Belfast)
Daddow has produced an excellent and welcome addition to the growing literature on the development of British European policy. The strength of this particular work is its focus on historiographical interpretations of policy development, or more accurately, interpretations of British policy towards Europe in the first 15 years after 1945. The major argument of the book is that the ‘interpretation of historical events is a socially constructed phenomenon, generated by different communities of writers at different times in response to a variety of stimuli’ (p. 154). This work focuses specifically on the enthusiasts' interpretation of British European policy and of how these have been challenged and altered over the course of the last four decades. The core of the book is built around an examination of three schools of thought, namely the orthodox school, the revisionist school and the post-revisionist school. Each interpretation of events is explored in turn. The second chapter on the people (academics, politicians, civil servants, journalists) behind the orthodox school covers the most familiar ground with analogies of missed buses and opportunities and makes for very informative reading. The third chapter on the revisionist school charts the emergence in the 1980s of a more critical response among historians (armed with released government documentation) against an oversimplification of historical developments by the orthodox school, and this chapter for the most part is preoccupied with the role and intentions of Ernest Bevin in the late 1940s. A new post-revisionist school (chapter 4) injected a degree of ‘messiness’ into the interpretations in the 1990s by placing its emphasis on how perceptions among individuals and government departments shifted over time. This book is extremely well written and is crammed from start to finish with a rich abundance of footnotes. It should be recommended to more advanced undergraduate students investigating the development of UK–EU relations.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 405, £75.00, ISBN 1 4039 0291 7
Readership: Undergraduates, professional
Rating: ****
Reviewer: VANDNA BHATIA (Carleton University)
This edited volume is intended to provide readers with a ‘synoptic view of public policy in Britain, France and Germany at the turn of the twenty-first century’ (p. 1) and generally succeeds. It provides an overview of four policy areas (defence and foreign relations, economic policies, sectoral policies, social policy) and a catchall category of ‘other’, together comprising a comprehensive list of 34 different sectors in total. Each chapter briefly addresses one sector and is organised into description of key policies in each nation, comparison across the three nations, discussion of recent developments and a list of sources. The quality and timeliness of the information provided in the chapters is consistently good. Chapters are well written and necessarily succinct, yet provide a great deal of useful information. The social-policy chapters, in particular, are excellent in organising and summarising a complex array of programmes and benefits into comprehensible comparisons across the three nations.
The volume is explicitly descriptive in nature, offering little in the way of sustained analytic comparison or discussion of the issues and policies addressed in each chapter. The book lacks an overview of the basic demographic, economic and structural characteristics of each nation that would help familiarise readers with the societies and systems that underpin and are shaped by the policies in question. Each chapter helpfully provides a list of sources, although a more instructive listing of additional references and sources would have been welcome. Nevertheless, for public-policy novices, it is a useful and accessible reference tool with which to survey quickly and broadly public policy in the three nations. It is an effective supplemental text for an introductory comparative public-policy course.
Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. 276, £22.95, ISBN 0 691 11798 5
Readership: Academic/Research
Rating: ****
Reviewer: HASAN ENGIN SENER (Middle East Technical University)
Kelley seeks to understand the role of international actors on ethnic issues in terms of her two key concepts, normative pressure and membership conditionality, with reference to four specific European countries (Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia and Romania) and three international organisations (the European Union (EU), the European Commission, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). The author develops her arguments by means of in-depth case studies taken from ethnic-related policy issues such as election, education, language and citizenship. Kelley's main argument is that without international involvement ethnic issues are hardly resolved and domestic opposition is prone to continue its own nationalistic policies. For Kelley, however, international engagement is not enough, if it remains at normative pressure (an attempt to persuade without prospective sanction) level. What is crucial according to Kelley is that ‘membership conditionality has been a surprisingly effective way for international institutions to shape minority-related policy, even in the face of considerable domestic opposition’ (p. 175). Although the power of domestic counter-will is seen as somewhat neutral in the last instance under certain circumstances, Kelley successfully elaborates that international actors (especially the EU) are able to overcome the resistance, if any, of the states concerned, if membership conditionality is put on the agenda. What is missing here is that legislation does not tell the whole story if the implementation fails. All in all, the book presents simple, clear and testable arguments and addresses to every reader who is interested in ‘ethnic politics’.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 261, £50.00, ISBN 0 333 62046 1
Readership: Undergraduates
Rating: ****
Reviewer: MATTHEW J. GOODWIN (University of Bath)
This text offers a political science approach to nationalism, placing a particular focus on political contexts and political behaviour. States, nations, nationalist political parties and their performance in elections thus take centre stage as the author provides a comparative ‘factual treatment’ of nationalism. By addressing electoral nationalism and constitutional contexts, this text suggests that nationalism remains as important as supranational institutions and processes, if not more so. The national character of the constitutions of most European states, the reluctance of the European Union (EU) to address the issue of national identity, support for devolution and general anti-EU sentiment are all recruited to support the argument that nationalism remains the dominant political force in twenty-first century Europe. Yet, unlike the past, nationalism is now rooted within a democratic context and so in order to truly understand its character we must first examine its electoral dimension (incorporating not just votes for nationalist parties, but also expressions of support for the nation in general). Kellas undertakes a sweeping analysis of over 25 case studies, outlining the dynamics of electoral nationalism in each, as well as the historical and constitutional context. As rightly noted by the author, the latter dimension of nationalism has been comparatively neglected in similar studies that have predominantly viewed nationalism as an extra-constitutional subject. Yet, in recent decades, nationalism has re-emerged as a potent force on Europe's political landscape, a development that has led to European constitutions becoming increasing national in character. The future for Europe, suggests Kellas, is a mixture of nationalism and supranationalism. Yet, until that time arrives, we remain very much in the ‘age of nationalism’ (p. 2). This text provides a comprehensive account of nationalism in a wide range of case studies and should serve to provide undergraduates with a thorough understanding of the theoretical and electoral dynamics of nationalism in contemporary Europe.
Europe
New books received
Alasdair Blair (2005) The European Union Since 1945. Harlow: Pearson Education, 166, £12.99, ISBN 0 582 42393 7.
Niilo Kauppi (2005) Democracy, Social Resources and Political Power in the European Union. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 211, £55.00, ISBN 0 7190 7058 9.
Daniel Levy Max Pensky John Torpey (2005) Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe: transatlantic relations after the Iraq war. London: Verso, 231, £15.00, ISBN 1 84467520 3.
Juliet Lodge (ed.) (2005) The 2004 Elections to the European Parliament. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 306, £55.00, ISBN 1 4039 3518 1.
Giandomenico Majone (2005) Dilemmas Of European Integration: the ambiguities and pitfalls of integration by stealth. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 241, £40.00, ISBN 0 19 9274304.
Berthold Rittberger (2005) Building Europe's Parliament: democratic representation beyond the nation-state. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 233, £45.00, ISBN 0 19 927342 1.
Julie Smith (2005) Reinvigorating European Elections: the implications of electing the European Commission. London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 148, £12.50, ISBN 1 86203 160 6.
Peter Thompson (2005) The Crisis of the German Left: the PDS, Stalinism and the global economy. New York: Berghahn Books, 136, £30.00, ISBN 1 5718 1543 0.
Tim Bale (2005) European Politics: a comparative introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 294, £19.99, ISBN 1 4039 1871 6.