Abstract
Governance and Politics of the Netherlands is a holistic account of Dutch political events and processes. Andeweg and Irwin, two academics based in the Netherlands, have updated the first edition with new sections on the changes in the political culture, climate and issues in contemporary Holland. Encyclopedic by nature, this co-authored book covers everything from executive power to foreign policy. Nevertheless, the underlying theme is representation in the Dutch political system. The book answers several questions based on this theme: what are the historical legacies of the Catholic/Dutch Reformed split on contemporary politics? Why has the political process evolved into an enviable system based on consensus between various represented constituencies, but yet seems under threat from anti-state actors, whether they are Islamic or environmental extremists? Finally, what role does the Netherlands play in world politics today and whose interests are being represented in action and inaction in international politics?
No doubt the book's greatest strength is its ‘A–Z’ coverage of Dutch politics from the formation of the Netherlands to what they are today. At the same time, this is also one of its most significant impediments to deeper analysis. Andeweg and Irwin provide a basic but thorough textbook that is clear, concise and loaded with information. Several areas spring out as particularly insightful. Most definitely the discussion of Pim Fortuyn's rise to politics and political assassination catches the reader's interest. Also the ‘Citizens and the Political System’ chapter is a brilliant discussion of the evolution and development of representation in the Dutch political system. Finally, the ‘Foreign Policy’ chapter is particularly interesting because the Netherlands has been keen on European integration (being an original member of the European Communities), while also maintaining a relatively strong transatlantic orientation.
Governance and Politics of the Netherlands provides a full account to readers of the Dutch political system, but there are also limits to its use. The book is an ideal teaching text for the Dutch university system as well as a very good introduction to those interested in Dutch politics. At the same time, it lacks a sufficient link to conceptual discussions that would easily project the Netherlands into a comparative light. Nevertheless, the book does ‘what it says on the tin’ and is an easy-to-read, well-researched, thorough addition to Palgrave's ‘Comparative Government and Politics’ series.
David J. Galbreath
(University of Aberdeen)
This volume edited by Bellamy, Castiglione and Shaw examines the development of a transnational citizenship in Europe. The aim is to move away from traditional analyses that focus on the extension of rights to the citizens of the member states or the post-national character of transnational citizenship. The main theme that can be found throughout the book is the understanding that a European citizenship is essential for the development of the EU. Without a common understanding of what this citizenship entails and how it works in reality the foundations on which the Union rests are in danger. This is expressed in a variety of ways and the book is organised into three main areas: European citizenship and the right of participation; the institutional settings where the citizen can participate; and how Europeanisation of civil society has opened opportunities to minority groups.
The book is well written and gives the reader a new way of approaching European citizenship by examining the development of it through analysing evolution of the institutions and how the citizens have had an active role in changing them. However, as is the risk with all edited volumes, the variety of the chapters – which range from an analysis of the ‘principle of affectedness’ (p. 56) to a genealogy of supranational EU standards in relation to a European sexual citizenship (p. 177) – makes it difficult sometimes to find a common denominator that combines the book into one piece. This weakness of the book can also be seen as one of its strengths. It has something for most readers, and as it includes a wide range of case studies, the theme that the institutions on which citizenship rests are a product of the citizens is strongly upheld.
For scholars and students of European integration and citizenship this volume is highly recommended. It sets out difficult questions for traditional approaches to citizenship, and what it may lack in cohesion between the chapters it thoroughly makes up for in the rigour of the content.
Tomas Adell
(Queen's University Belfast)
This edited volume by Graziano and Vink is a handbook that presents a critical overview of the state of the art in the burgeoning Europeanisation field of research. Furthermore, it points out what the gaps of the literature are in its current stage of development, while pointing out explicit directions for further research in the field.
The handbook is structured into five parts. After a short introduction by the editors, the second part deals with a long-awaited discussion of three issues of how to conceptualise, how to theorise and how to measure Europeanisation. In particular, the contributions by Radaelli and Pasquier and Haverland stand out through their sense for methodological rigour – so desperately needed in the field. Parts 3 and 4 are fully devoted to the polity, politics and policy dimensions of national political systems. In the final part, Lehmkuhl presents promises and pitfalls of Europeanisation research from a generalist perspective of the theory and methodology of political science and public policy research.
Covering the effects of Europe for all the traditional levels of political regime (politics, polity and policy), the so-called ‘core’ chapters are structured as follows: introduction, core research questions, key problems and conclusion. Starting with a short historical overview of Europeanisation research in the specific field, the second section outlines the main research questions scholars have been occupied with, what the main names are in the field and how they have gone about their research. The third section highlights the empirical, theoretical and methodological shortcomings of the existing research. Each chapter concludes with a brief evaluation of what has been achieved so far, with helpful suggestions for further research.
The major findings can be grouped into three themes: from a conceptual point of view, Europeanisation is not necessarily a ‘top-down’ process; nor can it be exclusively understood as a direct effect. Its impact is differential and does more than affect national policies. From a theoretical point of view, the literature so far has failed to feed back to the traditional integration theories. From a methodological point of view, counterfactual reasoning, thick descriptions and process tracing are the dominant and useful techniques in the field. However, a broader approach to how Europe impacts on domestic political systems embedded in comparative research designs including quantitative analysis and going beyond the ‘big three’ of Germany, the UK and France is all the more needed.
To conclude, this is by far the most comprehensive review of Europeanisation studies in the field. This edited volume is compulsory reading for students of the EU; it is informative and clearly structured and its chapters are written by authorities in the field of Europeanisation research. It is exceptional to find an edited volume where the quality of contributions is consistently high. In sum, I congratulate the editors on having laid down a guideline for new and existing scholars in the field to make rich empirical and analytical contributions to the debate.
Michael Kaeding
(University of Leiden)
Pension reform has been a decisive topic in the recent literature on the politics of welfare reforms. Such a literature often privileges two research strategies. Some contributions are based on the study of one or a few countries with a precise qualitative description of national peculiarities and even fewer independent variables to explain innovation, with an evident risk of provincialism. Some others are quantitative studies with a large, but often fragmented, collection of case studies and with a simplistic framework of independent and dependent variables.
This book's editors have proved to be fully conscious of these shortcomings of traditional comparative studies. Thus, they have coordinated the study of a complete universe of sixteen Western European countries (the ‘old’ EU member states and Switzerland) and an in-depth analysis of political and electoral systems and pensions policy for each. Adopting a holistic approach mainly based on historical institutionalism, the work is extremely homogeneous and provides interesting novelties for at least three distinct audiences.
For welfare state experts interested in the analysis of institutional change, the authors of each chapter give a complete account of national pension politics. For newcomers to the field and practitioners of pensions, both chapters and data appendix provide a highly comparable empirical description of pension systems after reforms. Finally, for students interested in comparative politics, the book represents a useful source of information about the impact of political institutions on policy-makers’ ability to implement innovation.
As Immergut and Anderson state in the introduction, the book's basic argument is that pension reforms in Western Europe depend not just on political institutions, but on their interaction with what the editors call ‘political competition’. This is represented by the ‘fight for votes’ which is highly influenced by the electoral map in each country (i.e. electoral rules and the distribution of political preferences).
The analyses provided in the individual contributions in fact move beyond the veto points and veto players theory, through a broader account of political factors (i.e. electoral cycle, interaction between the electoral and corporatist arena, the framing of political discourses, etc.). Moreover, the study of national reform process has succeeded in showing that it is not just globalisation or population ageing that have put pensions under siege, but also the erosion of their underlying social and normative foundations. Subsequently, voters are more volatile and the aggregation of political consensus more complex and less predictable.
Summing up, the book represents a unique source of comparable data and a promising step beyond the traditional contributions on the ‘stickiness’ of pension programmes. While political institutions and the structure of pension systems constrain the reform path, the interaction of political preferences, interests and strategies are an even more decisive group of variables to be tested. This is fertile ground for revising more traditional institutionalist analyses of the ‘new politics’ of welfare.
David Natali
(University of Bologna-Forli, Italy)
One of the most striking developments of the post-Second World War era has been the ongoing progress experienced by the countries of Western Europe on the road to integration. From an area long marked by war and struggle, there have arisen European institutions, policies and a parliament. These are major attainments warranting evaluation. Paul Magnette takes on the challenge of offering his learned assessment of what has happened and where the future may lead. He is an experienced observer of European affairs and has already written on these issues in various settings. This book is part of Palgrave's ‘European Union’ series. Their commitment to a widespread publication agenda regarding the EU is impressive.
Since its early beginnings and subsequent evolution, events related to the EU have proceeded in a complex and multifaceted manner. Amid the dynamic forces at work, there have coexisted competing understandings about what the new Europe represented. Alternative perspectives were the manifestation of fundamentally different understandings. Was the Community or Union to be primarily about economics and trade or rather a broader political community? To what extent is the Union or Community best understood as a federal union? What intergovernmental arrangements and philosophies best accorded with the Union's mandate and decision-making practices? These and other vitally important questions persist into the twenty-first century. Magnette offers his thoughts and suggests with regard to the state of the European integration ‘that a debate has never fully taken place on the nature of the common endeavour’ (p. 9). With this book Magnette shows himself ready to sponsor this debate.
The work at hand is written for a sophisticated audience already well versed in events and controversies in Western Europe. Magnette presents a cogent argument for his perspective on the evolving European situation. A more formalised federal structure seems unlikely and instead he sees the continued likelihood ‘of complex and oscillating compromises’ (p. 204). The notion that there is a democratic deficit in the EU is labelled a ‘myth’ (ch. 9). At the same time Magnette rejects the notion of writing off traditional state sovereignty (p. 190). There is much here to discuss about the characteristics of the Union.
The strengths of this volume are in the breadth of vision and the philosophical consideration of the interplay of sovereignty and integration over the course of several decades. This is a significant achievement. While one might have wished for more on some of the critical times which have tried the fibres of unity such as the travails over the collapse of Yugoslavia, or the relation of European identity arguments to the debate over possible Turkish membership, there is much to reflect upon in this work and Magnette's comments warrant significant attention.
Hugh Mellon
(King's University College, University of Western Ontario)
This book examines the European Union's Eastern Enlargement from the EU perspective, analysing the decision-making and inter-institutional context in which the Enlargement politics is taking place. Although the Enlargement has attracted much academic attention, an existing literature concentrates mainly on the relations between the EU and Central and Eastern European candidates or national adaptation of specific sectoral policies. O'Brennan's book fills the gap by presenting well the negotiations and policy-making procedures within the EU institutions before and during the accession.
The book is divided into three parts. The first, historical part, describes the road to the Eastern Enlargement from 1989 until 2004, concentrating mainly on the evolution of the relations and decisions taken during the most important summits and meetings and their influence on the Enlargement. The second part of the book analyses the role of three main EU institutions – the Council, Commission and Parliament – in the process, and provides a very interesting and detailed explanation of the responsibilities and influences of those institutions on the relations with candidate counties. This part of the book should be valued for a clear and informative analysis of the EU institutions’ effect not only on the integration process but also on overall EU policy-making.
The final part of the book supplies the reader with different theoretical concepts which stand behind the Enlargement, presenting geopolitical, economic and normative explanations of the process. In the last chapter of this part O'Brennan argues that although the EU Eastern Enlargement was motivated by a combination of these approaches, it was the normative desire which facilitated the 2004 accession. By employing the constructivist approach the author aims to prove that the ‘logics of appropriateness’, which countries follow because they are internalised and recognised as legitimate, governed the process and helped to define the CEE preferences.
This book only partially fulfils the author's main aim, which was the ‘analysis of the Eastern Enlargement process and its significance for the European Union’. He has managed to balance well the theoretical and empirical explanations of the Enlargement process, providing very important insights into the EU decision-making process. However, the significance of the Enlargement for the EU seems to have gained much less attention. Nevertheless, O'Brennan's book is well written, detailed and based on theoretical explanations and provides a substantial contribution to the study of the Eastern Enlargement process and internal EU policy-making. For those interested in the Eastern Enlargement this book is essential reading.
Joanna Kaminska
(Royal Holloway, University of London)
Based on a number of publications in West European Politics (2002), the Journal of European Public Policy (2003) and the Journal of Common Market Studies (2004), this book further explores the empirically uncontroversial, but theoretically underdeveloped questions of when, why and how formal leadership matters. Embedded in a rationalist theory of formal leadership Tallberg generates predictions about when, why and how negotiation chairs wield influence over the efficiency and distributional outcomes of multilateral negotiations. His compelling argument is that the rotating presidency in the EU constitutes a power platform that grants governments unique opportunities to shape the outcome of negotiations.
The book is structured as follows: first, the author presents the theory of formal leadership. He then traces the historical development of the office of the EU presidency from 1957 (its inception) to today. Chapters 4 to 6 represent the first case studies. They explore the argument that the presidency office presents the incumbent with opportunities to favour its own national interests in the process of raising the overall efficiency of the negotiations. Chapter 7 puts the European examples into a broader perspective, examining evidence on formal leadership in security (OSCE), trade (WTO) and environmental negotiations (UN). The book concludes with a summary of findings and an outline of its implications for the study of negotiation and decision-making in EU studies and IR theory.
Theoretically, this book is a welcome step forward. Empirically, Tallberg illustrates nicely how the powers of the EU presidency have evolved over time; the six EU cases further demonstrate that the presidency constitutes a powerful platform in EU bargaining; and the review of negotiations in three international settings helps to generalise the findings to other areas of international cooperation. Methodologically, however, the study could have been improved. More specifically, it is the selection of the six EU cases that puzzles me most. Focusing on the time period of 1999 to 2002 I identify 8 EU presidencies. Following a least-likely approach, why did the author select Germany, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and France? Why did he neglect Portugal, Belgium and Spain? Might we have a ‘Northern bias'?
Overall, I agree with Adrienne Héritier who argues that this book ‘is a must read for all who want to use rational choice institutionalism and general bargaining theory’ in the EU context and beyond. This work is by far the most comprehensive study of negotiation chairs. It is a well-researched book which will be of interest to any scholar of EU studies and beyond, for academics and practitioners alike.
Michael Kaeding
(University of Leiden)
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