Abstract
Although its title indicates a relatively specific subject area, this is a book of ambitious breadth and theoretical import. David Art, of the College of the Holy Cross, takes on the question of why in Germany and Austria, the two successor states of the Nazi regime, far-right political parties have had divergent records of success. Based on extensive field research, Art argues that the rise of extreme right parties must be explained through a careful account of elite-driven debates about the Nazi past and their impact on political cultures and dominant actors. The author begins by offering a framework for analyzing public debates in democracies which proceeds along a three-step sequence of frame creation, elite alignment and shifts in political discourse. Contrary to prevailing theories, all of this happens in a sudden and discontinuous manner.
Art applies this model to his two primary cases. In each, he provides a ‘history of memory', as well as insightful discussions of influential debates in the 1980s and 1990s. He demonstrates that debates about the past in Germany established a ‘contrition culture', which has gradually become dominant among German elites. In Austria, by contrast, the pivotal debate led to a polarization between elites and allowed the rhetoric of the far right to enter the mainstream. This divergence between the two cases and the resultant political culture explains why players in each country reacted differently to the rise of far-right forces. In Germany, politicians, media and civil society combated the right wing through a combination of co-optation of issues, confrontation and marginalization and so it could not rise to prominence. In Austria, there was an attempt to tame Haider and his party, resulting in their legitimation.
Art makes a sophisticated, inductive argument which he invites others to test. The book's great strength lies in the systematic presentation of empirical data. The argument is skilfully embedded in a diverse range of writings from the fields of American and comparative politics – from public deliberation to historical institutionalism. Apart from a considerable number of errors in German expressions, this book is clearly written and concisely argued. Especially useful are the appendices with which Art lays open his research process to his readers. This book will be of interest, not only to specialists on memory politics, far-right parties and European party systems, but also to anyone seeking a model for how to undertake rigorous qualitative research in political science.
Jenny Wüstenberg
(University of Maryland)
Academic debate on Eastern Europe has largely moved on from systemic replacement and democratic breakthrough to democratic consolidation, so institutional choice issues have become particularly salient. Political scientists generally agree that the balance between institutions and political culture as well as the intensity of socio-economic and external problems determine whether new democracies work efficiently or whether they remain ‘imperfect', ‘delayed', ‘stalled’ or, even, fail to survive entirely.
Bernhard argues that initial institutional choices need to be examined in close relation to subsequent functioning in order to explain democratic survival or failure which he distinguishes from consolidation. To this end he presents an institutional choice framework which he applies to the four cases of inter-war and post-war Germany and inter-war and post-1989 Poland. He trawls through the institutional choice literature (notably, but not solely, Elster, Offe and Preuss) and the well-known debates on presidentialism versus parliamentarianism and electoral system choice consequences for the party system. This leads him to adopt a political actor approach which stresses the importance of initial constitution-forming coalitions which proves flexible enough but difficult to operationalise in structuring the case studies.
Bernhard concentrates on the institution and constitution-framing coalition of 1919–21 which ensured democratic survival until 1930 in examining whether Weimar Germany was the classical example of defective institutional choice. The Great Depression then led to President Hindenburg's constitutional dictatorship through his abusive use of emergency powers and, ultimately, to Hitler's dictatorship. The Bonn Republic, on the other hand, produced a remarkably stable party system which made better, and more consensual, initial institutional choices (the federal and electoral systems), subsequently consolidated by executive strengthening measures and the banning of extremist parties.
Bernhard explains the shift from excessive democracy (until 1926) to Pilsudski's highly personal authoritarianism in inter-war Poland somewhat too simply – a generous proportional electoral system and unstable party and weak governmental systems. He does not highlight the complexity of the interplay between actors and the contextual situation as convincingly as the major Polish scholarship (Tomasz Nalecz, Michal Pietrzak and Anthony Polonsky). The account of the establishment and institutional restructuring of democracy in Poland after 1989 fails to rise above stodgy constitutional history in which the driving concepts derived from his original model are often submerged. He also neglects much contemporary Polish scholarship (Chrusciak, Garlicki, Grzybowski, Siemieński, Antoszewski and Herbut to name but a few) as well as the Sanford thesis in Democratic Government in Poland (2002). The latter demonstrates how the gradual building up of a constitutional consensus by 1997 has compensated for the fluidity of the party system.
This is an uneven study which contributes nothing to empirical research and little to the theoretical-methodological literature on the subject.
George Sanford
(University of Bristol)
In Between Two Unions, Dardanelli sets out to investigate the European dimension within Scottish devolution. In order to test his hypotheses of the European element playing a determining factor in Scotland's quest for self-determination, he compares data based on two crucial periods in Scottish devolution history: first, an analysis of the 1970s leading to the failed referendum of 1979; and second, the 1990s ultimately leading to the success of the 1997 referendum creating the Scottish Parliament. Dardanelli explores if it is the European question brought into Scottish politics that influenced the outcomes of both eras.
For each era, Dardanelli examines the attitudes of political parties, interest groups and mass public opinion to determine the role each played in the failure of 1979 and the success of 1997. Dardanelli argues that ultimately it is the difference of the European dimension, and how it was used by the political parties and interest groups, which explains the referendum outcomes. In the 1970s, he explains, many Scots found independence to be a step too far and devolution to be only a stepping stone to independence. More significantly, the European Community was rejected by most elites, including the SNP, and seen simply as an additional government and bureaucracy that will lead Scotland away from self-determination.
Following the rejection in 1979 and a much recentralised Conservative government, Dardanelli argues, a great shift had taken place within the Scottish elites. Interest groups and elites began to embrace Europe and began to exploit the idea of an independent Scotland within Europe. A ‘third level’ thus evolved and was able to capture the support of a Scottish public in favour of devolution. The use of this new ‘third level’ by the Scottish elites is Dardanelli's key to explaining the success of the 1997 referendum.
Dardanelli uses a brilliant combination of both qualitative and quantitative methodology. For both time periods, he examines documents, manifestos and interviews to capture the opinions of the Scottish elite on the issues of independence, devolution and Europe. Furthermore he quantitatively tests his findings against public opinion with the use of survey data from both decades. Between Two Unions is a perfect book for the student and researcher attempting to learn the role of the European dimension within Scottish devolution.
Glenn Gottfried
(University of Sheffield)
Regional Trading Arrangements (RTAs), for Francesco Duina, are the means by which free trade has been established in the world today. He acknowledges the role of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), but argues that the liberalising impetus, and indeed the main source of trade expansion, has been regionalisation. This argument is not, however, the book's main thrust. Duina's concern, rather, is to show how RTAs have assumed this role and, in doing so, to accentuate the differences between RTAs. Too often RTAs are seen as derivative of a global commitment to free trade, but if this were the case we would not need them at all – the WTO would be sufficient. Instead, RTAs make free trade possible, by socially constructing the actual markets within which liberalisation policies are experienced. The aim of this book, then, is to compare RTAs; Duina is proudly pioneering the sub-field of Comparative Regional Integration, to correct the existing literature's tendency to study RTAs in isolation, or to assume they are identical.
The basis for this comparison is Duina's economic sociology. His understanding of the operation of markets both enables and compels him to see differences in the regional markets underpinned by RTAs, since he is aware that they emanate from different social practices. Duina therefore examines closely the role of norms, concerning either viewpoints on how markets should work or definitions of what markets are. Due to the influence of these norms on the agents creating and maintaining RTAs, each RTA is uniquely shaped by pre-existing local realities. Duina also adds that the interests of key political actors are important, alongside norms; this dimension of his approach is more loosely conceptualised, but nevertheless he manages to provide a sophisticated account of the agency of the people that are responsible for creating regional markets, and how differences in their forms arise from this.
The real strength of this book is the volume of empirical material assembled by Duina. Whether his framework is accepted or not, the information assembled on his case studies would prove valuable to any student. Its weakness is that Duina sometimes cannot see the wood for the trees; that is, he fails to ask whether RTAs actually do, collectively, represent a particular aspect of a global economic system. Perhaps this is because he never asks what the outputs of regional integration are – he is interested only in inputs, which are more variable.
Craig Berry
(University of Sheffield)
The combination of decentralized state structures and centralized organizations of societal interests has rendered the German state semisovereign. Peter Katzenstein explained that twenty years ago, and he also described the characteristic incrementalist and consensual political processes and their successful policy outcomes resulting from semisovereign governance.
This edited volume sets out to probe ‘the applicability and future viability of semisovereign governance in Germany’ (p. 19) in the present more problem-laden and more competitive policy-making environment. The studies of core institutions of the German polity in chapters 2–5 of the volume all diagnose some degree of erosion in the social bases of semisovereign governance, with societal interests organized less broadly and governmental decision-making increasingly taking on unilateral, authoritative forms. Among the studies of individual policy fields in chapters 6–12, some view the traditional policy processes as basically intact, others see signs of (successful?) adaptation, while a third group stresses a tendency toward ongoing crisis and dysfunctions. Taken together, the empirical chapters provide sophisticated, balanced and up-to-date information about recent developments in Germany's institutions and politics.
What follows from this analytically, however? If the development of semisovereign governance varies across policy fields, and if, moreover, unambiguous and uncontested judgements about policy success or failure are notoriously hard to come by (as Peter Katzenstein points out in his concluding chapter [p. 290]), then the quest for an overall theory of governance in Germany and its future viability may be perilous. Overgeneralizations about permanent crisis or enduring success of power sharing in Germany are erroneous; calls for the strong state as lessons drawn from the perceived failures of the semisovereign one outright frivolous. So it is good that that the hidden subtext – that the future of ‘Model Germany’ is at stake as an ‘indispensable point of reference in debates about governance in Europe’ (p. 8) – came to the fore only occasionally.
Margitta Maetzke
(Goettingen University)
Jacqueline Hayden's book is a quest to find an explanation of the fall of communism in Poland. More specifically, the author aims to address the question of why the Communist party (PZPR) lost power so rapidly following the semi-free election of 1989. The author focuses on the rationales of and reasons behind the choice of strategies and institutional arrangements negotiated by the Communist party leaders in the context of the round table process, which led to this collapse.
By asking these questions the author examines and evaluates some of the existing approaches to transition in order to assess to what degree they succeed in providing a viable explanation of political change in Poland. A more general and more ambitious aim of this book is to seek a theoretical model more accurate in predicting the trajectory of transition countries than the structural accounts used previously. Written in an accessible style, this book would have benefited from better editing and copy-editing.
Hayden relates the failure of structural approaches to ‘identify the possibility of regime change’ to the lack of attention to the ‘preferences of the regime actors’ (p. 140). In contrast, the approach adopted by Hayden is ‘actor-based’ and ‘process-driven'. She seeks ‘to expose the underlying mechanisms, interactions, motivations and strategies that led to the collapse of communism in Poland’ (p. 9) by testing the empirical material against two conflicting hypotheses: Colomer's, who argued that the rational actors making decisions in their best interests can play the main part in transitions to democracy; and Przeworski's, according to which the transition to democracy could have been the outcome of misinformed and miscalculating actors’ strategies.
The empirical material consists of an impressive number of interviews with the main figures involved in the round table negotiations from both sides: the PZPR and Solidarity. This is supplemented by an analysis of documents such as proposals to establish the office of the president of the PRL, letters and other secondary sources. This not only provides a basis for the author's theoretical discussion, but also it gives the reader a sense of engagement in real dilemmas facing the PZPR and Solidarity leaders at this historical juncture so important for Poland and Europe.
Hayden succeeds in proving the inadequacy of structural accounts alone to provide explanatory power on ‘why some regimes fall and others survive’ (p. 140). Her own process-driven account, valuable in shedding some light on the part of political process usually hidden from view is, I believe, limited by its own narrow focus. I doubt that the ‘perfect information had the potential to change the course of history', when it is processed by often less than perfect political actors, who might even be rational, but whose mentality and narrowness of vision would not prevent the ‘suboptimal … bargains’ (p. 142) being reached.
Bogusia Puchalska
(Lancashire Law School, UCLAN Preston)
The Political Economy of Poland's Transition advances the thesis that ‘the creation of new economic entities, not just restructuring of existing enterprises, is the key to successful economic and political transformations’ (p. 10). The core argument of Jackson et al. rests on the implied correlation between the increase in the number of jobs and income generated by the new firms and the growth of the constituency supporting liberal market reforms. This constituency, provided that its existence will become evident and will endure, might be able to offset some of the opposition to reforms generated by economic hardship, thus becoming a stable electoral base for the liberal and reformist parties in the long term. More crucially, the authors claim that ‘the successful economic transition, built on de novo firm creation, establishes the basis for and is closely tied to the successful political transition’ (p. 229).
The authors adopted the Schumpeterian model of ‘creative destruction’ in conjunction with an approach known as organisational ecology. The latter uses the language of biology, which was, consequently, adopted throughout the book. The main methods are statistical analysis, modelling, comparisons and inferences based on statistically significant correlations. The wide spectrum and sheer number of data quoted and analysed render this work a valuable source of unique statistical data; they also provide insight into the experiential dimension of Polish economic transformation. Comparisons with other transition countries and the US state of Michigan paint a more comprehensive picture of political and economic changes, but they are also used to strengthen the claim that the Polish reforms are indeed a success story.
Using statistical methods, the authors arrived at a number of significant findings, such as that new firms played a much more pivotal role in the success of economic transformations than the old, restructured and privatised ones. Moreover, the regional disparities in economic progress, including the agglomeration effect, were found to have affected the political composition of the parliament. This argument further claims that these regional differences had an important impact on structuring political cleavages and ultimately, through a combined effect with the rules governing the election, proved influential in the allocation of seats in the parliament.
This work makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of how market economies evolve, particularly by identifying the crucial role of de novo firms in their transition and development. However, this book is, I believe, less successful in the way that it uses economic data to explain the reality of the Polish political scene, such as voting preferences and the falling support for democracy. Although there is definitely a correlation between economic prosperity clustered in some regions, voting preferences and the electoral rules which, through disadvantaging the successful regions, reduces the influence of the pro-reform constituencies, this is only a small part of the political dynamic, and probably not the most decisive one. Such an argument leaves out what, arguably, are much more crucial political factors, such as the elitist and unrepresentative party system, or the deep distrust of the political class which led to voting for the perceptibly more honest political formation with scant regard for its political programme or attitude to economic reforms. This might suggest that the book was slightly overambitious in trying to build a model that would allow prediction of political behaviour using mainly economic data and rooted in predominantly economic argument.
Bogusia Puchalska
(Lancashire Law School, UCLAN Preston)
This book sets out to describe, analyse and ultimately compare the parties and party systems of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia. These eight countries were chosen because they all joined the European Union in May 2004 and because they are all considered to be stable liberal democracies. The book consists of an introductory chapter by the editor, case study chapters of each country and a comparative conclusion by the editor. Each country chapter aims to outline idiosyncratic party-system features as well as assess the following themes: the nature of partisan division (social cleavages, ideological dimensions and salient present-day issues); institutional aspects of the party system such as the electoral system, quantitative measures of party competition, volatility, etc.; and the nature of party organisations and party–voter linkages (or the lack thereof). That said, the country chapters are not totally standardised, varying in thematic emphasis. The individual country chapters also outline, if they are not indeed structured around, the evolution of the party system over the past decade and a half. Both the introduction and the country chapters also note where parties are placed in terms of the party groups of the European Parliament. The introductory chapter also outlines the various ways in which the party systems of the region differ from those of the fifteen Western European EU members: greater fragmentation, especially electoral fragmentation, lower turnout and most notably higher volatility. The comparative conclusions are insightful on several points, including that the Czech Republic and Hungary have the most well-organised and cohesive parties and also have the most stable party systems (each of which is now basically unidimensional) whereas the party systems of the Baltic states and Poland are the most unstable and volatile. The country chapters vary somewhat in length (Latvia the shortest, Poland the longest), but all are strong and informative. Overall, this is definitely the book to be read first by all those interested in the party politics of the region. Especially useful are the many data tables provided, including in some cases membership figures for individual parties. Perhaps the main feature under-analysed is the high level of wasted votes cast for parties that fall below the respective national electoral thresholds (not that these are excessively high), since this would seem to be part of why electoral fragmentation is clearly above Western European levels while parliamentary fragmentation is only slightly above.
Alan Siaroff
(The University of Lethbridge)
Readers of Krieckhaus's well-researched study should not be deceived by its title and expect an assessment of the EU's developmental policy. To drive the point home the index at the end of the book lists that the EU has been mentioned only once throughout the volume. Instead, Krieckhaus tackles the issue of why some countries from the global periphery have managed to achieve substantial and sustained growth while others have fallen short of this objective. His investigation convinces him that the economic growth of these countries has to a large degree been ‘historically determined’ by their colonial experience (p. 9). Thus, Krieckhaus emphasizes the significance of the period of European colonialism in setting the initial conditions that still affect (if not dictate) the policies of developing countries.
Such inference leads him to depart from the dominant assumptions in the literature on development which maintain that it is domestic conditions (i.e. political stability and effective state bureaucracy) that impact economic growth. In contrast, Krieckhaus asserts that it is external determinants (i.e. colonial experience and other international events) that have the upper hand when it comes to explaining (as well as prognosticating) patterns of development. He even asserts that ‘developing countries have less control over their fates than commonly assumed’ (p. 169). Krieckhaus corroborates his claims with detailed case studies of the experiences of Mozambique, Korea and Brazil. Furthermore, in an insightful break-up with the analytical strategies of the literature on development he advances the ‘holistic empiricism’ approach to the study of economic growth that simultaneously assesses historical, statistical and country-specific dynamics (p. 177).
This methodological innovation allows Krieckhaus to integrate in his analysis insights from the disciplines of international political economy and political science. At the same time, his focus on divergent conceptions of development allows him to construct a balanced and convincing argument that economic growth in the global periphery is closely related to the initial conditions set by colonialism and the subsequent investment in the establishment of human capital. As Krieckhaus points out, his findings are applicable to current debates in development policy and contribute to the proposition that it is the careful targeting of foreign aid (in particular towards education and health) that might hold the key to alleviating the woeful conditions in the global periphery. Krieckhaus's volume merits the attention of both scholars and practitioners interested in developmental issues; at the same time, its accessible language and clear style suggest that the book can become part of the syllabus of advanced undergraduate courses on international development.
Emilian Kavalski
(University of Alberta)
Is the split in the transatlantic alliance between Atlanticists and Europeanists a permanent one or is it indeed the first sign of a longer transformation process? Are the Robert Kagans of this world right in their assertion that the transatlantic relationship is bound for a dead-end road? Where is the transatlantic alliance heading? What are the security priorities of the state? How are those interests best pursued, either through a closer relationship with NATO or through greater collaboration with an evolving Europe? Or the reverse: what contributions can the state in question make to the transatlantic alliance? And, finally, what are their long-term goals? These are important questions to ask in the field of international relations that is highly influenced by the news media, op-ed pieces and policy practitioners and the authors of this volume were tasked to answer them. It is important for the discipline to use scholarly tools to examine closely the nature of the transatlantic relationship and this book can be seen as a starting point for this analysis. This is the real contribution of this volume to the literature; it provides a first overview of the nature of the transatlantic relationship. Yet, this also makes this volume appear rather generic; it provides a quick overview of the state of the art up until 2005. It is nicely separated into what Donald Rumsfeld called the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ Europe and examines trends in national security policies of fifteen states (France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Benelux, Italy, Russia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania) in only thirteen chapters. However, the strength of this book truly is the section about ‘new’ Europe where it provides fresh perspectives and analysis; not much new information is being conveyed in the ‘old’ Europe section.
The weakness of this generic volume is that most of the chapters do not seem to address the important research questions raised in the introduction. Instead, they tend to spend most of the time and space with historical overviews of the country's national security policy and only a few paragraphs are actually dedicated to the post-9/11 nature of the transatlantic relationship. For example, the chapter about France reads like a rant against French policies. Thus, for the informed scholar specializing in transatlantic relations, this book is of limited use, particularly because it does not add new perspectives or sources to the discussion about the ‘old’ Europe.
Secondly, surprisingly little of the European security strategy of 2003 in addition to the draft constitutional treaty is mentioned in the book. This, however, would have been useful, because it would have shown the reader that the EU indirectly supports the Bush doctrine and its Wilsonian ambition of changing remote states into prosperous democracies. The EU as much as the United States has adopted a Wilsonian approach to international relations by advocating the promotion of the spread of democracy, installing free trade regimes and the rule of law.
Thirdly, the book leaves the impression that Canada is not a partner in the transatlantic alliance any more. There is no chapter about Canada and its relationship with Europe and its institutions in this volume. This is rather unfortunate because Canada, indeed, has a strong relationship with Europe and its issues. Thus, in summary, this is a fruitful start, but more editions need to be written addressing the issues that were left out in this book.
Benjamin Zyla
(Royal Military College of Canada)
This book illustrates how the nationalities question – i.e. the problems and demands of national groups without their own state – are dealt with in Europe in an era of growing supranational and transnational cooperation and integration. The introduction sets out four broad processes with which European integration affects the nationalities question: the ‘end of unitarianism’ (the process of sovereignty diffusion, upwards to the EU and downwards to sub-national units); the ‘erosion of borders’ (removed restrictions to the movement of capital and labour, increasing cross-border cooperation); the rise of a ‘political space beyond the state’ (the possibility for non-state actors to gain institutional recognition and to be represented in decision-making processes); and the development of ‘an international regime of minority-rights protection’ promoted by the EU as well as other international organisations like the Council of Europe and the OSCE. While each of these elements represents an opening of opportunities to overcome the problems posed by national minorities (pp. 8–12), the authors make clear that limits and contradictions implicit in the process of European integration should not be underestimated (pp. 12–20). The following chapters deepen and broaden this framework with theoretical and comparative contributions (chs 2–9) and illustrate it with the help of a number of case studies (chs 10–8).
Overall, this book is an important and innovative piece of work. To begin with, it is among the first attempts in this field to examine Eastern and Western European cases together, bridging a gap that has fewer and fewer reasons to survive after the breakdown of communist regimes and the EU enlargement. Moreover, it questions the effects of European integration on the issues of minority nationalism, while most of the existing literature just takes for granted that the European polity is better suited to the solution of such controversies than is the traditional framework of the nation state. And it is precisely the comparison of Eastern and Western experiences that sheds light on the challenges and paradoxes opened up by the emerging context of post-sovereignty. On the other side, the book would have benefited from a more homogeneous structure of the chapters, especially in the case studies section. Some of them deal primarily with parties, some with regions; some put the European dimension at the core of the analysis, some treat it more marginally. This said, the research paths indicated by this volume are numerous and highly relevant. A careful reading is recommended to all scholars working in the field of minority nationalism.
Filippo Tronconi
(Università di Siena)
Compared with neighbouring Finland which, from the outset, sought proactively to position itself at the core of the European Union, Sweden, which also joined in 1995, has appeared to many to be a largely reactive and peripheral EU member state. Whereas Finland participated as a founder EMU member and advocated innovative ventures such as the so-called ‘northern dimension initiative', Sweden appeared, initially at least, to be ‘stand-offish’ and reluctant to adapt to the rules of the European game. Led by a prime minister, Göran Persson, who, until a later con-version, was opposed to EMU and who in turn led a Social Democratic party that was deeply divided over ‘Europe', Sweden appeared to drag its feet. Moreover, it showed resentment when the Finnish prime minister, Paavo Lipponen, effectively told it as much. In what the author informs us is his ‘third major book-length study of Sweden', Lee Miles seeks to set the record straight with the ambitious aim of analysing Swedish EU membership between 1995 and 2003. However, the primary emphasis is on the period running up to the Swedish EU presidency in 2001. The study draws principally on secondary sources – books and articles in English written mainly by Swedes – supplemented by interviews with politicians and officials conducted between 1998 and 2001. The book's approach is informed by a national or micro-level variant of Wolfgang Wessels’ macro-level ‘fusion perspective’ and seeks to assess how government and policy-making in Sweden have adapted to EU membership. The basic thesis is that Swedish policy-making is rapidly becoming fused with that of the European Union and, accordingly, the orientation is more supranational. As Miles notes (p. 122), ‘the Swedish political elite can effectively “play the game of Europe” at both the national and EU levels'. In short, he claims, Sweden's reputation of being a ‘reluctant European’ is no longer deserved.
Evidence of the three dimensions which he identifies in the ‘fusion’ concept – ‘performance fusion', ‘political fusion’ and ‘compound fusion’ – is sought in long chapters dealing with government and parliament and the wider policy community of parties and interest groups. There are also case studies of monetary policy and security policy. The narrative is detailed and well informed. Ultimately, however, the ‘fusion perspective’ becomes a straitjacket that suffocates and oppresses the analysis. It imposes a neo-Stalinist conformity. Each and every development is said to be consonant with the ‘fusion perspective', which in truth obfuscates rather than illuminates. Typically, we are told (p. 156, p. 216) that ‘the Swedes are acting as unofficial fusionists'. There is the need to call a spade a spade. The reader might also have expected a more critical approach, challenging rather than deferring to stereotyped depictions of Swedish government and politics as open, consensual and a case of a ‘bargaining democracy'. There is plenty of useful ‘insider detail’ but not enough ‘insider insight'. The book would have profited from being sharper and shorter. It is also curious that the endnote references to parliamentarians often do not name the person in question.
David Arter
(University of Aberdeen)
This is the first full English translation of five pamphlets written by Antonio Negri between 1971 and 1977: the period when Negri was active in the Leninist group Potere Operaio (‘Workers’ Power') and its more diffuse inheritor, the milieu of Autonomia Operaia (‘Workers’ Autonomy'). As well as the end of the cycle of industrial activism which followed the ‘Hot Autumn’ of 1969, this period saw the rise of a second cycle of contention, spanning working-class estates and university campuses, which peaked in 1977 before going into an enforced decline.
These movements were the context and the audience of the pamphlets collected here. However, these are dense and abstract texts, which engage with contemporary developments primarily by embedding them in Negri's rereading of passages from Marx. Negri sets out an elaborate but coherent argument in the first pamphlet, ‘Crisis of the Planner-State', and develops it over the next three. Capitalism has entered a potentially terminal crisis, he argues; the dialectical relationship between working-class action and capitalist development has broken down, so that ‘[c]apital becomes immediately and exclusively command over the labour of others’ (p. 24). Any talk of socialism or reform is futile at best, reactionary at worst: radicals must engage with ‘the mass will to appropriation’ (p. 34) and prepare for the imminent overthrow of capitalism.
The fifth pamphlet, ‘Domination and Sabotage', stands apart. Here, Negri's millenarian Marxism is imbued with a sense of lived engagement, drawing on his phenomenological background as well as on personal experience. The result was scandalous: Negri denounces unionised factory workers as parasites on capitalism, then celebrates the violence of rioters – among whom he counts himself. Negri's 1983 conviction on terrorist charges owed much to passages like this.
Perhaps understandably, these translations are sometimes a little generous: notably, Negri's deliberately shocking characterisation of factory workers’ wages as ‘rendita’ (‘rent', ‘unearned income') is blunted by being rendered figuratively as ‘political income’ (p. 251). Overall, the translators have acquitted themselves well in an unenviable task. Negri repeatedly calls for engagement and inquiry, but seems happy to delegate them to others; his own preferred style is a dense and meticulous deployment of abstractions. Few will want to read this volume at a sitting. Nevertheless, it remains a valuable record of a neglected period of radical activity and theory. At its best – in ‘Domination and Sabotage’ – it is inspiring as well as challenging, capturing the radical exhilaration of what seemed to be a revolutionary moment.
Phil Edwards
(University of Manchester)
The process of gradually enlarging the European Union (EU) eastwards over the last decade and a half has attracted much academic attention although few coherent attempts to explain its dynamics. In his exploration of the role of identity in the process Sedelmeier provides a rich and stimulating addition to the existing literature that further challenges rationalist-materialist assumptions about enlargement. His focus is on a key group of policy advocates located within the European Commission and how they influenced and used the EU's discursively constructed collective identity towards the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to play a defining role in driving the development of the EU's relations with these countries in the early 1990s; this involved promoting their interests and influencing the subsequent EU commitments to enlarge eastwards and the decisions that eventually led to the EU's first eastwards enlargement in 2004. Drawing on analyses of developments in three policy areas – trade liberalisation, regulatory alignment with the internal market and political dialogue – Sedelmeier also reveals the uneven impact that the EU's collective identity had across different groups within the Commission, observing too the significant role of sectoral policy paradigms in determining policy-makers’ preferences.
Those who have engaged with Sedelmeier's existing work on EU enlargement will be familiar with several of the arguments put forward in the book. This should not, however, deter academics or students of international politics and European integration from reading this latest contribution. Equally lessons learned regarding policy coordination should attract practitioner readers too. Drawing on doctoral work, the book provides more detailed empirical data as well as more complex argumentation and analysis. However, although there has been some updating of the original material, the focus remains primarily on the early and mid-1990s, leaving some scope for a more detailed empirical analysis of the role played by policy advocates since then. Interesting questions concerning what influence those within the Commission subsequently had on decisions relating to the opening and then the progress of accession negotiations and what use was made of EU identity in seeking to determine decisions about the ‘when’ and ‘to whom’ of enlargement are not addressed in any great depth. Such criticisms aside, Sedelmeier's scholarly analysis provides a well-grounded set of compelling arguments that help us explain at least the origins of one of the most important processes in contemporary European integration.
David Phinnemore
(Queen's University Belfast)
The book provides a detailed and richly documented analytical account of historical experience with semi-presidential constitutional design in Weimar Germany and the French Fifth Republic. The author's main focus is on the systematic analysis of consequences of this constitutional choice for the processes of democratic re-equilibration and consolidation. In both countries, the book argues, the impact of constitutional design was critically shaped by structurally determined characteristics of the party system, electoral formulae adopted by the legislators and party politics-related choices made by presidential incumbents. The book's discussion evolves around the analysis of the effects of electorally generated sub-types of semi-presidentialism. The book is persuasive in arguing that electoral and party system characteristics explain the differences in effectiveness of semi-presidential institutions. As for the institutionalist account, the book is not highly appreciative of the idea that distinct sub-types of semi-presidentialism can also be generated by the variation in constitutional norms delineating the powers of the president, Cabinet and parliament. Such a possibility, however, should be of more concern to scholars studying cases more dissimilar in terms of formal distribution of powers than the constitutions of Weimar and the French Fifth Republic.
The book suggests that the bad news for constitutional drafters from new democracies, where semi-presidentialism remains a highly popular constitutional option, is that political systems of these new democracies are more likely to experience problems similar to those found in the Weimar Republic than to benefit from the structural and political characteristics that contributed to the democratic success of the French Fifth Republic. The book also provides a list of practical recommendations which, if entrenched in constitutional or statutory documents, might help to mitigate some problematic effects of semi-presidentialism.
The book contributes to a more general debate on the nature of constitutional regimes by arguing forcefully that semi-presidentialism constitutes a distinct constitutional type. Given the recent surge of attention to qualitative analysis and case-study methods in the study of politics, the book should also be of relevance for those who are interested in methodological issues of qualitative research on comparative political institutions. The book is a carefully designed study that combines cross-case comparison and within-case analysis using the methods of process tracing and historical explanation. As such, and despite some confusing promises in the introduction's footnotes to maximise the number of observations, the book illustrates the key advantages of case studies and generates a number of new hypotheses that need to be explored further by students of semi-presidentialism.
Oleh Protsyk
(European Centre for Minority Issues)
This edited collection brings together academics (such as Jonathan Michie and Matthew Watson), trade unionists (including Billy Hayes, General Secretary of the CWU) and political practitioners (including Tony Benn, the late Peter Shore and the Guardian's Economics Editor, Larry Elliot) who associate themselves with the left of British politics. It is an attempt to provide a critique of the euro that contrasts with what the authors see as, on the one hand, almost universal support among the British left for UK membership of the single currency and, on the other hand, the prevalence of right-wing, nationalist and/or xenophobic arguments against British membership within the contemporary political debate in Britain. The main argument is that the euro prevents neo-Keynesian demand-side macroeconomic policy, which reduces the opportunity for (national or supranational) governments to prevent and/or ameliorate economic down-swings. This problem is compounded by the undemocratic nature of the politically independent European Central Bank, and the absence of any substantive opportunity to realise a supranational ‘European Social Model’ (ESM) (which itself forms the basis for the British left's support for the euro).
The book is divided into three parts: the economics of a single currency (which focuses on the detrimental impact of the neoliberal implications of the euro); employment and social aspects of EMU (which focuses on the absence of a ‘social democratic’ ESM); and sovereignty and political determination (which focuses on the undemocratic implications of the euro and European integration). It also includes a number of chapters which argue for a neo-Keynesian alternative outside of the single currency.
While the book provides an interesting and useful overview of the views of left-of-centre British Euro-sceptics, it lacks originality in that many of the criticisms have already been made elsewhere. The book was also completed before the French ‘no’ vote on the constitution, where many of the same arguments were made. Further, the brevity of each chapter (less than ten pages on average) means that none of the arguments can be made in any great depth. Finally, while aiming to represent the views of the British left, the authors are drawn almost exclusively from the mainstream left – i.e. the (left of the) Labour party – with the exception of the green critique by Molly Scott Cato. The arguments made, therefore, are almost all a neo-Keynesian critique of neoliberal capitalism, rather than the more radical critique of capitalism per se, or of the parliamentary route to democracy/equality.
David Bailey
(Aston University)
This thoroughly researched and clearly written book on nineteenth-century Italy (as created by Piedmont) and Germany (as created by Prussia) speaks to central theoretical issues about state formation. That is, it seeks to answer two related but different questions: first, why do polities come together as a single unified country, and, second, why do certain of these situations lead to federalism and others to a unitary state? What is particularly interesting in Ziblatt's comparison is the (federal) road not taken by nineteenth-century Italy – despite the strong intellectual and political arguments for this at the time.
Regarding the first question, Ziblatt's original contribution is an empirical analysis of 24 German and Italian pre-national regional states, which fall into four categories based on relative size and relative level of development. Ziblatt shows how it was large and rich states that pushed for unification, and how opposition came primarily from the large and poor ones (Bavaria, the Kingdom of Two Sicilies). Regarding the second question, Ziblatt shows how various traditional theories of federalism are inadequate for his comparison, directly refuting the argument about the importance of relative military capacity – after all, Prussia was more dominant militarily within Germany than Piedmont was within Italy. Instead, Ziblatt bases his explanation on infrastructural capacity. Specifically, in Germany the pre-unification states were effective and modernized, with working constitutions and functioning parliaments. In contrast, in pre-unification Italy outside Piedmont such effective states did not exist. Ziblatt thus stresses that federalism can be seen ‘as an outgrowth of a very specific path of nation-state formation in which state building and political development at the sub-national level precede national unification, leaving in place a set of states that can both negotiate the terms of national unification and effectively govern after national unification’ (p. 16).
The book is convincing with respect to Italy and Germany, and it is especially noteworthy for its empirical data and analysis. Overall, though, this book deals essentially with ‘coming together’ federalism. It is quite relevant for other cases of this process. Conversely, the book and its theory are not very helpful for what Alfred Stepan would call ‘holding together’ federalism granted by the government of an already existing unitary state. Indeed, the ‘holding together’ case of Belgian federalism in 1993 is the one exceptional situation identified by Ziblatt when he applies his model to all of Western Europe – although Spain in 1978 should be similarly noted.
Alan Siaroff
(The University of Lethbridge)
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