front cover of The Art of Lobbying the EU
The Art of Lobbying the EU
More Machiavelli in Brussels (revised edition)
M. P. C. M. van Schendelen
Amsterdam University Press, 2013
Every day in Brussels, countless governmental and civil society interest groups seek to influence the policies of the European Union (EU). Many groups, once they have established themselves in the EU capital, apply the insights of Public Affairs (PA) management, the modern art of lobbying. Many PA practitioners in the EU as well as academics specialised in EU and PA studies developed fresh insights on ‘how to influence the EU better’. This manual brings together the most up-to-date collection of PA expertise available to anyone desiring to enhance the success of their efforts to influence the EU. This new edition of the best-selling title is filled with new details, cases, findings and practices. This fully revised and updated fourth edition of the 2002 bestseller offers compelling new insights into the most advanced practices of influencing the decision-making in the European Union’s corridors of power. The author’s uniquely privileged position as advisor to a wide range of lobby groups from several different countries throws much-needed light on best practice and success in public affairs management.
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Bridging the Information Gap
Legislative Member Organizations as Social Networks in the United States and the European Union
Nils Ringe and Jennifer Nicoll Victor with Christopher J. Carman
University of Michigan Press, 2013

Legislative member organizations (LMOs)—such as caucuses in the U.S. Congress and intergroups in the European Parliament—exist in lawmaking bodies around the world. Unlike parties and committees, LMOs play no obvious, predefined role in the legislative process. They provide legislators with opportunities to establish social networks with colleagues who share common interests. In turn, such networks offer valuable opportunities for the efficient exchange of policy-relevant—and sometimes otherwise unattainable—information between legislative offices. Building on classic insights from the study of social networks, the authors provide a comparative overview of LMOs across advanced, liberal democracies. In two nuanced case studies of LMOs in the European Parliament and the U.S. Congress, the authors rely on a mix of social network analysis, sophisticated statistical methods, and careful qualitative analysis of a large number of in-depth interviews.

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Brussels, the Gentle Monster
or the Disenfranchisement of Europe
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Seagull Books, 2011
The inner workings of the European Union are as much a mystery to those living within its confines as they are to those of us who reside elsewhere. The Brussels bureaucracy that sets many of the EU’s policies feels remote to its citizens, yet the influence of its decisions can extend worldwide and throughout the global marketplace.
 
In this timely and insightful essay, Hans Magnus Enzensberger blends reportage, argument, and analysis in order to make sense of the EU’s present political and economic roles and examine the EU’s origins and inherent contradictions. In Enzensberger’s view, Europe is involved in a project without precedent—the first non-violent form of post-democratic governance, which is trying to abolish the diversity of Europe and impose a regime that is not accountable to its citizens. Its often bizarre and arbitrary rules amount to a soft but relentless guardianship, dictating how half a billion people should live their lives regardless of their own political opinions and traditions. Enzensberger here offers a strategy for approaching this modern monster—at once gentle and giant, friend and foe.
 
Praise for Enzensberger
 
“How should one cope with Germany? Let’s ask Hans Magnus Enzensberger. . . . One can only marvel at his permanent alertness, his tone of cold enragement, the dimensions of his hunger for experience, most of all however, one can only marvel at his sense of important issues. For 50 years, time and again Enzensberger has posed the right questions to German society. . . . No one should ever believe Enzensberger is on his side. Whenever someone makes a clear distinction between Good and Evil, Enzensberger will jump out of his cover and shout: It’s not that simple.”—Florian Illies, Die Zeit
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Brussels Versus the Beltway
Advocacy in the United States and the European Union
Christine Mahoney
Georgetown University Press, 2008

This book presents the first large-scale study of lobbying strategies and outcomes in the United States and the European Union, two of the most powerful political systems in the world. Every day, tens of thousands of lobbyists in Washington and Brussels are working to protect and promote their interests in the policymaking process. Policies emanating from these two spheres have global impacts—they set global standards, they influence global markets, and they determine global politics. Armed with extensive new data, Christine Mahoney challenges the conventional stereotypes that attribute any differences between the two systems to cultural ones—the American, a partisan and combative approach, and the European, a consensus-based one.

Mahoney draws from 149 interviews involving 47 issues to detail how institutional structures, the nature of specific issues, and characteristics of the interest groups combine to determine decisions about how to approach a political fight, what arguments to use, and how to frame an issue. She looks at how lobbyists choose lobbying tactics, public relations strategies, and networking and coalition activities. Her analysis demonstrates that advocacy can be better understood when we study the lobbying of interest groups in their institutional and issue context. This book offers new insights into how the process of lobbying works on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Choosing Europe?
The European Electorate and National Politics in the Face of Union
Cees van der Eijk and Mark N. Franklin
University of Michigan Press, 1996


This is a book about elections to the European Parliament, their failure to legitimate and control the exercise of power in the European Union, and the consequences of this failure for domestic politics in EU member states. It also sheds new light on why voters behave the way they do. The authors examine the 1989 Europe-wide elections with the aid of large-scale surveys fielded in all twelve member countries of the (then) European Community--placing European citizens within their institutional, political, economic, and social contexts. In particular, because three countries held national elections concurrently with the 1989 European elections, the study controls for the presence or absence of a national election context--permitting the authors to investigate electoral behavior in general, not just at European elections. Looking at such behavior while taking account of the strategic contexts within which elections are held has yielded new insights about turnout and party choice, while clarifying the crisis of legitimacy that faces the European Union. The more recent Europe-wide elections of 1994 are used to validate the findings.

This book will be of interest to political scientists interested in elections, the European Union, comparative politics, and political development.

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Conquering Peace
From the Enlightenment to the European Union
Stella Ghervas
Harvard University Press, 2021

A bold new look at war and diplomacy in Europe that traces the idea of a unified continent in attempts since the eighteenth century to engineer lasting peace.

Political peace in Europe has historically been elusive and ephemeral. Stella Ghervas shows that since the eighteenth century, European thinkers and leaders in pursuit of lasting peace fostered the idea of European unification.

Bridging intellectual and political history, Ghervas draws on the work of philosophers from Abbé de Saint-Pierre, who wrote an early eighteenth-century plan for perpetual peace, to Rousseau and Kant, as well as statesmen such as Tsar Alexander I, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, Robert Schuman, and Mikhail Gorbachev. She locates five major conflicts since 1700 that spurred such visionaries to promote systems of peace in Europe: the War of the Spanish Succession, the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. Each moment generated a “spirit” of peace among monarchs, diplomats, democratic leaders, and ordinary citizens. The engineers of peace progressively constructed mechanisms and institutions designed to prevent future wars.

Arguing for continuities from the ideals of the Enlightenment, through the nineteenth-century Concert of Nations, to the institutions of the European Union and beyond, Conquering Peace illustrates how peace as a value shaped the idea of a unified Europe long before the EU came into being. Today the EU is widely criticized as an obstacle to sovereignty and for its democratic deficit. Seen in the long-range perspective of the history of peacemaking, however, this European society of states emerges as something else entirely: a step in the quest for a less violent world.

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Delegating Responsibility
International Cooperation on Migration in the European Union
Nicholas R. Micinski
University of Michigan Press, 2022

Delegating Responsibility explores the politics of migration in the European Union and explains how the EU responded to the 2015–17 refugee crisis. Based on 86 interviews and fieldwork in Greece and Italy, Nicholas R. Micinski proposes a new theory of international cooperation on international migration. States approach migration policies in many ways—such as coordination, collaboration, subcontracting, and unilateralism—but which policy they choose is based on capacity and on credible partners on the ground. Micinski traces the fifty-year evolution of EU migration management, like border security and asylum policies, and shows how EU officials used “crises” as political leverage to further Europeanize migration governance. In two in-depth case studies, he explains how Italy and Greece responded to the most recent refugee crisis. He concludes with a discussion of policy recommendations regarding contemporary as well as long-term aspirations for migration management in the EU.

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Democracy and Lobbying in the European Union
Karolina Karr
Campus Verlag, 2007
Can interest groups and lobbyists—arguably undemocratic institutions—operate in democratic systems without hindering the people’s interests? Karolina Karr’s Democracy and Lobbying in the European Union explores the role and potential impact of interest groups on democracy, both in theory and practice, in the context of a changing continent. This timely volume explores how the power of interest groups has developed due to the growing distance between elected representatives and the European people and forecasts what this development might mean for the vitality of government.
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Democracy Needs Dispute
The Debate on the European Constitution
Edited by Cornelia Brüll, Monika Mokre, and Markus Pausch
Campus Verlag, 2009

In 2005 hopes for closer European integration were dealt a potentially fatal blow when French and Dutch voters rejected the proposed new European Union constitution. Going beyond the instant analysis of journalists, which placed blame for the failed vote on the two nations’ internal politics, Democracy Needs Dispute examines a collection of media accounts of European policy debates to argue that the problem with the EU is its relative lack of vibrant political conflict. Democracy Needs Dispute offers both up-to-date analysis and a rich theoretical understanding of the problems facing further efforts at European integration.

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The Dynamics of European Integration
Causes and Consequences of Institutional Choices
Thomas König
University of Michigan Press, 2024
In Europe’s recent history, there have been several challenges to the strength of the European Union—Brexit, COVID, financial crises, and global tensions—bringing an increased need to understand the ways that the European Union (EU) could successfully stay  together or fall apart. In examining how the European Union has changed since 1993, important puzzles have emerged, including how national government functions are transferred to the EU without reforming the EU, how increased transparency is announced while decisions are approved in informal meetings, and how the effects of the polarizing rise of Euroscepticism can be managed to still promote the formation of solidarity and trust among Europeans. To understand these puzzles, Thomas König introduces a new theory of (supra)national partyism to help explain the causes and consequences of choices made by political leaders for Europe. He uses a game-theoretical perspective to look at how conditions for leaders change through accessions of new members, shocks, and crises, and separates institutional choices into two different games played by office- and policy-seeking political leaders—the interstate summit game and the national game of party competition. The Dynamics of European Integration reveals how the reorganization of electoral systems can harness dissensus and polarization among diverse national constituencies to enable the promotion of solidarity and trust in the EU.
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The Economic Integration of Europe
Richard Pomfret
Harvard University Press, 2021

The clearest and most up-to-date account of the achievements—and setbacks—of the European Union since 1945.

Europe has been transformed since the Second World War. No longer a checkerboard of entirely sovereign states, the continent has become the largest single-market area in the world, with most of its members ceding certain economic and political powers to the central government of the European Union. This shift is the product of world-historical change, but the process is not well understood. The changes came in fits and starts. There was no single blueprint for reform; rather, the EU is the result of endless political turmoil and dazzling bureaucratic gymnastics. As Brexit demonstrates, there are occasional steps backward, too. Cutting through the complexity, Richard Pomfret presents a uniquely clear and comprehensive analysis of an incredible achievement in economic cooperation.

The Economic Integration of Europe follows all the major steps in the creation of the single market since the postwar establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community. Pomfret identifies four stages of development: the creation of a customs union, the deepening of economic union with the Single Market, the years of monetary union and eastward expansion, and, finally, problems of consolidation. Throughout, he details the economic benefits, costs, and controversies associated with each step in the evolution of the EU. What lies ahead? Pomfret concludes that, for all its problems, Europe has grown more prosperous from integration and is likely to increase its power on the global stage.

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Enraged Citizens, European Peace and Democratic Deficits
Or Why the Democracy Given to Us Must Become One We Fight For
Robert Menasse
Seagull Books, 2016
In 2010, Robert Menasse journeyed to Brussels to begin work on a novel centered on the European Union. His extended stay resulted in a completely different book—Enraged Citizens, European Peace and Democratic Deficits, a work of nonfiction examining the history of the European project and the evolving politics of nation-states.

Spanning from the beginning of the transnational idea with 1951’s Montanunion—the European Coal and Steel Community—to the current financial crisis, Menasse focuses on the institutional structures and forces both advancing and obstructing the European project. Given the internal tensions among the European Commission, Parliament, and Council, Menasse argues that current problems that are frequently misunderstood as resulting from the financial crisis are, in fact, political. Along the way, he makes the bold claim that either the Europe of nation-states will perish—or the project of transcending the nation-states will.

A provocative book, Enraged Citizens, European Peace and Democratic Deficits deftly analyzes the financial and bureaucratic structures of the European Union and sheds much-needed light on the state of the debt crisis. Menasse brings his considerable literary expertise to the unraveling of the real state of the Union, along the way weaving an intriguing tale of one continent’s efforts to become a truly postnational democracy.
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EU Development Policy in a Changing World
Challenges for the 21st Century
Edited by Andrew Mold
Amsterdam University Press, 2007
On many fronts, European Union development policy is at a critical juncture: in the face of new obstacles, the EU has been forced to rethink trade, security, and its relationship with neighbors in North Africa and the Middle East. Contentious questions have centered on the effects of EU expansion, agricultural protectionism, and development-friendly trade policy in the EU and its member nations. To answer these questions and others, this expertly edited volume draws on analysis from well-known specialists in fields such as public policy and economic development, providing a critical overview of EU development policy and the challenges it must confront in an increasingly volatile and changing world.
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Eurolegalism
The Transformation of Law and Regulation in the European Union
R. Daniel Kelemen
Harvard University Press, 2011

Despite western Europe's traditional disdain for the United States' "adversarial legalism," the European Union is shifting toward a very similar approach to the law, according to Daniel Kelemen. Coining the term "eurolegalism" to describe the hybrid that is now developing in Europe, he shows how the political and organizational realities of the EU make this shift inevitable.

The model of regulatory law that had long predominated in western Europe was more informal and cooperative than its American counterpart. It relied less on lawyers, courts, and private enforcement, and more on opaque networks of bureaucrats and other interests that developed and implemented regulatory policies in concert. European regulators chose flexible, informal means of achieving their objectives, and counted on the courts to challenge their decisions only rarely. Regulation through litigation-central to the U.S. model-was largely absent in Europe.

But that changed with the advent of the European Union. Kelemen argues that the EU's fragmented institutional structure and the priority it has put on market integration have generated political incentives and functional pressures that have moved EU policymakers to enact detailed, transparent, judicially enforceable rules-often framed as "rights"-and back them with public enforcement litigation as well as enhanced opportunities for private litigation by individuals, interest groups, and firms.

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The European Union
A Critical Guide
Steven P. McGiffen
Pluto Press, 2006
The political dynamics of the European Union can often appear confusing, shrouded as they are in complex legislative processes. This book offers a clear and thorough critical introduction to the origins, development and current direction of the EU, and pinpoints the major policy debates animating decision-makers.

This revised and updated edition offers a well-illustrated analysis of each of the EU¹s major policy areas, and covers arguments both for and against the EU. McGiffen explores subjects including enlargement, internal and external security, the Euro, trade, the environment, employment, transport and regional policy. He explains how and why the debate about membership is frequently and falsely presented as if it were a conflict between 'nationalism' and Œinternationalism', and argues instead that the EU is merely one of a number of possible solutions to the the economic and political problems facing Europe.

Published in association with Spectre.

Steve McGiffen is a writer, author and consultant. Until recently he worked for the United Left Group in the European Parliament and the Socialist Party of the Netherlands. He is editor of Spectre, a radical left website which can be read at www.spectrezine.org, His previous books include Biotechnology (Pluto Press, 2005).
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The European Union and the Rise of Regionalist Parties
Seth K. Jolly
University of Michigan Press, 2015
Rather than weakening the forces of nationalism among member states, the expanding power of the European Union actually fosters conditions favorable to regionalist movements within traditional nation-states. Using a cross-national, quantitative study of the advent of regionalist political parties and their success in national parliamentary elections since the 1960s, along with a detailed case study of the fortunes of the pro-independence Scottish National Party, Seth K. Jolly demonstrates that supranational integration and subnational fragmentation are not merely coincidental but related in a theoretical and predictable way.

At the core of his argument, Jolly posits the Viability Theory: the theory that the EU makes smaller states more viable and more politically attractive by diminishing the relative economic and political advantages of larger-sized states. European integration allows regionalist groups to make credible claims that they do not need the state to survive because their regions are part of the EU, which provides access to markets, financial institutions, foreign policy, and other benefits. Ultimately, Jolly emphasizes, scholars and policy-makers must recognize that the benefits of European integration come with the challenge of increased regionalist mobilization that has the potential to reshape the national boundaries of Europe.

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The European Union
From Jean Monnet to the Euro
Dean Kotlowski
Ohio University Press, 2000
The transformation of Europe since the end of World War II has been astounding. In 1945, a battle–scarred continent lay in ruins. Today, it has achieved a level of integration, prosperity, and stability that few people could have anticipated. The life and career of the French statesman Jean Monnet and the recent adoption of the “euro” as Europe's common currency represent the bookends of this half–century–long metamorphosis.

This collection of essays, drawn from the lectures of the 1999 Baker Conference at Ohio University, explores Monnet's vision of an integrated Europe, its gradual implementation, and the social, economic, and international consequences. The scholarship focuses upon Monnet's life, personality, and legacy, the development of social policy within the European Union (EU), the economic and national security implications of the EU, and the continuation of an American presence in Europe through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

This significant collection fuses biography with comparative political economy and policy studies to help political scientists, sociologists, economists, international lawyers, and historians on both sides of the Atlantic understand important aspects of Europe's post–1945 development.
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The European Union, Turkey and Islam
The Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR)
Amsterdam University Press, 2005
The relationship between Turkey and Islam is a hotly debated issue that dominates discussion over the country's bid to join the European Union. The European Union, Turkey and Islam examines here the role of religion in Turkey and the EU and offers arguments on why Turkish Islam will not be an obstacle to Turkey's EU membership.

The distinguished contributors analyze Turkish Islam and attempt to determine how significant a factor it is in Turkey's compatibility with the democratic and humanitarian aims of EU member states. Their incisive essays argue that Islamic religious forces will not undermine the autonomy of the secular Turkish state. They also contend that Islam-inspired political parties actually support the secular government. Included in the volume is the thought-provoking study "Searching for the Fault-Line" by E. J. Zürcher and H. van der Linden that examines Turkey's current religious landscape and ultimately dismisses the notion of an inevitable clash between Turkish Islam and European cultures.

A valuable study for political scientists, European scholars, and interested observers, The European Union, Turkey and Islam offers a timely and masterfully argued case for why Islam as practiced in Turkey should not be an impediment to the nation's membership in the European Union.
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The Federal Future of Europe
From the European Community to the European Union
Dusan Sidjanski
University of Michigan Press, 2000
The European Union is building step-by-step a new federal system based on states, nations, and regions. In his authoritative and comprehensive book, Dusan Sidjanski describes the formation of the original European Community and the dynamics of the process of integration that has brought the Union to its current state. He then provides a sophisticated analytic framework for considering the future of the Union.
The author argues that federalism is the best antidote to the reemergence of nationalism in Europe. It is also the best guarantee for a peaceful community that balances the claims of national, regional, and local identity against the need for large-scale economies that springs from the forces of globalization, competition, and technical change. The Union preserves diversity within a flexible and innovating European system.
This major study of the development of the European project, informed by a thorough knowledge of the Community and Union over the years and by deep understanding of the relevant literatures in political science and political economy is important for all who study the European Union or work with it as officials and business people.
Dusan Sidjanski is founder and Professor Emeritus of the Department of Political Science, University of Geneva and Professor Emeritus, European Institute. He has authored numerous publications, most recently, The ECE in the Age of Change (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, United Nations).
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Global Europe
The External Relations of the European Union
Otto Holman
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
The European Union is facing the worst existential crisis in its history. At the same time, it is confronted with old and new challenges in its environment that call for joint action. But how do matters stand with the EU's capacity to act? Does the EU manage to effectively combine the different components of its external relations -- such as trade, development aid, and security policy -- better than it did in the past? How is the EU's external action determined by the internal socio-economic and political crises in its member states? These questions and more are answered in Global Europe in the context of the current impasse in the integration process. A clear analysis of the history of the EU's external relations up to now provides us with a better insight into the feasibility of EU strategies directed at the outside world.
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Governing the New Europe
Jack Hayward and Edward C. Page, eds.
Duke University Press, 1995
Governing the New Europe provides a comprehensive and scholarly account of the changing political map of Europe as it emerges from the Cold War. Exploring the variations of liberal democracy and market economy among the European states, as well as current trends in these directions, the contributors to this volume, all leading authorities in European politics, consider whether a common political model has begun to emerge out of historic European diversity.
Beginning with a discussion of the political, economic, and cultural development of Europe from a historical perspective, the focus of the book shifts to an examination of the changing forms of European democracy and the move from public ownership and planning to privatization and deregulated competition. Further essays analyze the challenge to national party systems and electoral performance from emerging social movements and organized interest groups. Political and bureaucratic structures are also examined as is the new European constitutionalism reflected in the increasingly significant role of the judiciary. Lastly, attention is turned to several major themes in European politics: the changing foundations of foreign and security policy, the function of industrial champion firms, and the retreat from the welfare state. Primarily comparative in its scope, Governing the New Europe does devote particular attention to specific major states as well as to the importance of the European Union to the political life of member and non-member countries.
Neither exaggerating the common features of the patterns that have emerged in contemporary Europe nor capitulating to the complexity of enduring differences and instabilities between states, Governing the New Europe will become one of the standard texts in its field.

Contributors. Jack Hayward, Jolyon Howorth, Herbert Kitschelt, Marie Lavigne, Tom Mackie, Michael Mezey, Edward C. Page, Richard Parry, Richard Rose, Anthony Smith, Alec Stone

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The Government and Politics of the European Union
Neill Nugent
Duke University Press
The leading text in its field, The Government and Politics of the European Union offers a clear and comprehensive explanation of the historical development and ongoing evolution of the European Union (EU). As in previous editions, this sixth edition presents an account and analysis of the origins of the Union, the key treaties, the main institutions and political actors, and the EU’s policies and policy processes. The book, in short, explains where the EU has come from, what it now does, and how it does it.

There have been many developments within the European Union since the last edition of this volume. In May 2004, the EU increased in size from fifteen to twenty-five member states, and, in so doing, became a pan-European, rather than Western European, organization. The following month, national leaders reached agreement on the contents of the long-discussed and exhaustively negotiated Constitutional Treaty only to see the fruits of their labors rejected in 2005 by voters in France and the Netherlands. These are only the most obvious manifestations of a constantly evolving integration process addressed throughout the book. Every chapter has been extensively revised since the last edition.

The Government and Politics of the European Union also includes reflections on the conceptual and theoretical tools used to analyze the integration process and the EU, as well as on the factors likely to influence the Union’s future development.

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The Government and Politics of the European Union
Neill Nugent
Duke University Press
The leading text in its field, The Government and Politics of the European Union offers a clear and comprehensive explanation of the historical development and ongoing evolution of the European Union (EU). As in previous editions, this sixth edition presents an account and analysis of the origins of the Union, the key treaties, the main institutions and political actors, and the EU’s policies and policy processes. The book, in short, explains where the EU has come from, what it now does, and how it does it.

There have been many developments within the European Union since the last edition of this volume. In May 2004, the EU increased in size from fifteen to twenty-five member states, and, in so doing, became a pan-European, rather than Western European, organization. The following month, national leaders reached agreement on the contents of the long-discussed and exhaustively negotiated Constitutional Treaty only to see the fruits of their labors rejected in 2005 by voters in France and the Netherlands. These are only the most obvious manifestations of a constantly evolving integration process addressed throughout the book. Every chapter has been extensively revised since the last edition.

The Government and Politics of the European Union also includes reflections on the conceptual and theoretical tools used to analyze the integration process and the EU, as well as on the factors likely to influence the Union’s future development.

[more]

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Imagining Politics
Interpretations in Political Science and Political Television
Stephen Benedict Dyson
University of Michigan Press, 2019

Imagining Politics critically examines two interpretations of government. The first comes from pop culture fictions about politics, the second from academic political science. Stephen Benedict Dyson argues that televised political fictions and political science theories are attempts at meaning-making, reflecting and shaping how a society thinks about its politics.

By taking fiction seriously, and by arguing that political science theory is homologous to fiction, the book offers a fresh perspective on both, using fictions such as The West Wing, House of Cards, Borgen, Black Mirror, and Scandal to challenge the assumptions that construct the discipline of political science itself.

Imagining Politics is also about a political moment in the West. Two great political shocks—Brexit and the election of Donald Trump—are set in a new context here. Dyson traces how Brexit and Trump campaigned against our image of politics as usual, and won.

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Interests and Integration
Market Liberalization, Public Opinion, and European Union
Matthew J. Gabel
University of Michigan Press, 1998
Integration in Europe has been a slow incremental process focusing largely on economic matters. Policy makers have tried to develop greater support for the European Union by such steps as creating pan-European political institutions. Yet significant opposition remains to policies such as the creation of a single currency. What explains continued support for the European Union as well as opposition among some to the loss of national control on some questions? Has the incremental process of integration and the development of institutions and symbols of a united Europe transformed public attitudes towards the European Union?
In this book, Matthew Gabel probes the attitudes of the citizens of Europe toward the European Union. He argues that differences in attitudes toward integration are grounded in the different perceptions of how economic integration will affect individuals' economic welfare and how perceptions of economic welfare effect political attitudes. Basing his argument on Easton's idea that where affective support for institutions is low, citizens will base their support for institutions on their utilitarian appraisal of how well the institutions work for them, Gabel contends that in the European Union, citizens' appraisal of the impact of the Union on their individual welfare is crucial because their affective support is quite low.
This book will be of interest to scholars studying European integration as well as scholars interested in the impact of public opinion on economic policymaking.
Matthew Gabel is Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Kentucky.
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The Language(s) of Politics
Multilingual Policy-Making in the European Union
Nils Ringe
University of Michigan Press, 2022

Multilingualism is an ever-present feature in political contexts around the world, including multilingual states and international organizations. Increasingly, consequential political decisions are negotiated between politicians who do not share a common native language. Nils Ringe uses the European Union to investigate how politicians’ reliance on shared foreign languages and translation services affects politics and policy-making. Ringe's research illustrates how multilingualism is an inherent and consequential feature of EU politics—that it depoliticizes policy-making by reducing its political nature and potential for conflict. An atmosphere with both foreign language use and a reliance on translation leads to communication that is simple, utilitarian, neutralized, and involves commonly shared phrases and expressions. Policymakers tend to disregard politically charged language and they are constrained in their ability to use vague or ambiguous language to gloss over disagreements by the need for consistency across languages.

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Machiavelli in Brussels
The Art of Lobbying the EU
Rinus van Schendelen
Amsterdam University Press, 2002
Countless interest groups representing governments and civil societies try to lobby the European Union effectively in pursuit of the desired legislation, subsidies and more. This book describes the everyday practice of lobbying in Brussels, drawing on extensive research and the author's personal experience.

The objective of these interest groups is to influence the EU decision-making, of which they see themselves as a stakeholder. To the existing representative bodies such as the Parliament and the Council, they add their practice of lobbying for a desired outcome by making their interests present or represented at the EU level. In a roundabout way, they contribute to the EU integration and also to its democracy, so long as the following conditions are fulfilled.
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Making Migration Work
The Future of Labour Migration in the European Union
Edited by Jan Willem Holtslag, Monique Kremer, and Erik Schrijvers
Amsterdam University Press, 2013
Largely because of the European Union’s two-phase expansion in 2004 and 2007, labor migration across the continent has changed significantly in recent years. Notably, the EU’s policy of open borders has enabled a growing stream of workers to leave new member states in search of higher wages. As a result, the nature, scale, and direction of migration flows have changed dramatically. Making Migration Work explores how policy can—and should—address these changes. In the process, this timely volume considers the future trajectory of a phenomenon that has become an increasingly sensitive political issue in many European nations.
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Mobility in Transition
Migration Patterns after EU Enlargement
Edited by Birgit Glorius, Izabela Grabowska-Lusinska, and Aimee Kuvik
Amsterdam University Press, 2013
Ten central and eastern European countries, along with Cyprus and Malta, joined the European Union in two waves between 2004 and 2007. This volume presents new research on the patterns of migration that resulted from the EU’s enlargement.

The contributors identify and analyze several new groups of migrants, notably young people without family obligations or clear plans for the future. Including case studies on migrants from Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Latvia—as well as on destination countries such as the United Kingdom and Germany—the resulting collection insightfully points towards future migration trends and sets guidelines for further research.
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Monetary Politics
Exchange Rate Cooperation in the European Union
Thomas H. Oatley
University of Michigan Press, 1998
A single currency--and the necessary prior condition of exchange rate cooperation and the stabilization of exchange rates--has been an elusive goal of many European leaders for more than twenty years. While much of the literature on exchange rate cooperation within the European Union focuses on the integration of national economies as the driving force, Thomas Oatley draws on public choice models to develop an explanation of exchange rate cooperation based on domestic politics. The author then tests hypotheses derived from this model in a detailed consideration of the various efforts to stabilize currencies since the 1970s. Oatley argues that monetary policy has distributional effects and is used by policy makers to achieve domestic policy goals. Thus domestic politics plays an important role in defining the approach leaders take to monetary integration. Oatley suggests that leaders supported the creation of the European Monetary System because governments saw a link to the Bundesbank as a useful instrument to help slow the growth of wages, redistribute income from labor to capital, and achieve domestic stabilization. The later collapse of the System reflected the unwillingness on the part of many leaders to continue to follow the Bundesbank's lead as well as the Bundesbank's own reservations about monetary integration.
Given the rising strife in countries such as France over the domestic costs of monetary integration, Oatley's domestic politics explanation will be useful in understanding the continued efforts of European policy makers to work towards an integrated currency. This book should appeal to political scientists and economists interested in international cooperation, the European Union and exchange rate systems.
Thomas Oatley is Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of North Carolina.
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Nationalism, Devolution and the Challenge to the United Kingdom State
Arthur Aughey
Pluto Press, 2001

front cover of The New Eurocrats
The New Eurocrats
National Civil Servants in EU Policymaking
Karin Geuijen, Paul Hart, Sebastiaan Princen, and Kutsal Yesilkagit
Amsterdam University Press, 2008
Policies in the EU are largely made by national civil servants who prepare and implement decisions in Brussels as well as at home. Despite their important role, these national civil servants form a relatively hidden world that has received little attention from both the media and academics. This volume considers a wide variety of sources and research methods to answer such questions as: how many civil servants are actually involved in EU-related activities? What do these civil servants do when they engage with the EU? And how do they negotiate their dual roles? The New Eurocrats offers unique and invaluable insight into these civil servants and their working practices—and uncovers some secrets in the world of EU governance along the way.
 
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The Political Influence of Business in the European Union
Andreas Dür, David Marshall, and Patrick Bernhagen
University of Michigan Press, 2019
Many citizens, politicians, and political activists voice concern about the political influence of business in the European Union. But do business interests really pull the strings in Brussels? Contrary to expectations, this book shows that business interests are no more influential than other interests in shaping contemporary EU policies. Andreas Dür, David Marshall, and Patrick Bernhagen present an original argument that stresses the role of public actors in facilitating or impeding interest groups’ lobbying success. Novel data on a large number of legislative proposals on the EU’s agenda and three case studies present strong support for this argument. The Political Influence of Business in the European Union offers new insights into how lobbying success depends on the demand and supply of information, as well as new ideas on how to measure lobbying success. The book advances a fresh perspective on the question of business power and shows why business interests often lose in the policy struggle.
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Rescued by Europe?
Social and Labour Market Reforms in Italy from Maastricht to Berlusconi
Maurizio Ferrera and Elisabetta Gualmini
Amsterdam University Press, 2004
As a result of its political and economic turmoil for much of the postwar period, Italy was considered the "bad seed" in the European community. Harsh ideological divisions, chronic executive instability, inefficient bureaucracy, uneven socio-economic development, organized crime, and unbalanced public finances all contributed to this negative perception of the nation. Yet a massive economic and social overhaul was launched in the 1990s as part of Italy's efforts to meet the famous Maastricht requirements in order to join the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU).

This book examines the processes Italy underwent to become part of the integrated European community and skillfully analyzes the consequences of the "Maastricht process" by exploring the effect it had on governmental and social actions and modes of orientation. Rescued by Europe? offers sharp insights into the importance of welfare state reform to current Berlusconi government, and how the weakening of the European Union's constraints has renewed the resistance to further changes. Ferrera and Gualmini ultimately argue that the constraints and opportunities linked to European integration have been the driving forces behind Italy's positive expansions, yet even with these reforms, there is still a long road ahead for European integration and Italy's political future.
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Resisting Europe
Practices of Contestation in the Mediterranean Middle East
Edited by Raffaella A. Del Sarto and Simone Tholens
University of Michigan Press, 2020
Resisting Europe conceptualizes the foreign policies of Europe—defined as the European Union and its member states—toward the states in its immediate southern “neighborhood” as semi-imperial attempts to turn these states into Europe’s southern buffer zone, or borderlands. In these hybrid spaces, different types of rules and practices coexist and overlap, and negotiations over meaning and implementation take place. This book examines the diverse modalities by which states in the Mediterranean Middle East and North Africa (MENA) reject, resist, challenge, modify, or entirely change European policies and preferences and provides rich empirical evidence of these contestation practices in the fields of migration and border control, banking and finance, democracy promotion, and telecommunications. It addresses the complex question of when and how MENA states capitalize on their leverage and interdependence in their relationships with Europe and contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of Europe–Middle East relations, while engaging with broader debates on power and interdependence, order, and contestation in international relations. While a contribution on the practices of resistance and contestation of MENA states vis-à-vis European policies and preferences in this geopolitically significant region was overdue, this volume leads the way for subsequent studies that seek to overcome the constraints of exceptionalism so characteristic of research of the Middle East, Europe/the European Union, and certainly of their relationship.
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Security Integration in Europe
How Knowledge-based Networks Are Transforming the European Union
Mai'a K. Davis Cross
University of Michigan Press, 2013

At a time when many observers question the EU’s ability to achieve integration of any significance, and indeed Europeans themselves appear disillusioned, Mai’a K. Davis Cross argues that the EU has made remarkable advances in security integration, in both its external and internal dimensions. Moreover, internal security integration—such as dealing with terrorism, immigration, cross-border crime, and drug and human trafficking—has made even greater progress with dismantling certain barriers that previously stood at the core of traditional state sovereignty.

Such unprecedented collaboration has become possible thanks to knowledge-based transnational networks, or “epistemic communities,” of ambassadors, military generals, scientists, and other experts who supersede national governments in the diplomacy of security decision making and are making headway at remarkable speed by virtue of their shared expertise, common culture, professional norms, and frequent meetings. Cross brings together nearly 80 personal interviews and a host of recent government documents over the course of five separate case studies to provide a microsociological account of how governance really works in today’s EU and what future role it is likely to play in the international environment.

“This is an ambitious work which deals not only with European security and defense but also has much to say about the policy-making process of the EU in general.”
Ezra Suleiman, Princeton University

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The State of Europe
Transformation of Statehood from a European Perspective
Edited by Sonja Puntscher Riekmann, Monika Mokre, and Michael Latzer
Campus Verlag, 2004
While globalization affects the sovereignty of every nation-state, European countries face special challenges due to the emergence of the European Union. The State of Europe explores the transformation of ideas of statehood in light of the EU’s continued development, including rapidly changing notions of democracy, representation, and citizenship alongside major shifts in economic regulation. This book will be an essential guide for students and teachers of economics, political science, and international relations, as well as anyone interested in the expanding role of the EU worldwide.
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Transforming Masculine Rule
Agriculture and Rural Development in the European Union
Elisabeth Prügl
University of Michigan Press, 2011

"The premise of mainstreaming gender is to bring equality concerns into every aspect of policy-making, and this brave book offers a close look at how feminists have taken up the challenge to transform the hidden dynamics of male domination in agricultural policy in Europe. In contrast to the automatic assumption that (neo)liberal policy always works against women’s interests, Prügl demonstrates the potential for feminist ju-jitsu to take advantage of multiple levels of governance to empower women in some circumstances. Although feminists were not always successful, the story of their efforts to remake agricultural policy should encourage activists to look for points of leverage in this and other contested and changing multilevel power systems."
---Myra Marx Ferree, University of Wisconsin

"Information on policy development, conflicts about improving the status of farm women, and using rural development policies to foster gender equality is hard to access in English and extremely useful for researchers concerned with the specifics of gender equality policy in the EU."
---Alison Woodward, Institute for European Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

"This book is a must-read for scholars interested in the gendered process of global restructuring. Elisabeth Prügl succeeds superbly in teasing out the power politics involved in European agricultural policy. Through the lens of a feminist-constructivist approach, she makes visible the multiple mechanisms of gendered power within the state. This very lucid narrative is a milestone in a new generation of feminist theoretical scholarship."
---Brigitte Young, University of Muenster, Germany

Taking West and East Germany as case studies, Elisabeth Prügl shows how European agricultural policy has cemented long-standing gender-based inequalities and how feminists have used liberalization as an opportunity to challenge such inequalities. Through a comparison of the EU’s rural development program known as LEADER as it played out in the Altmark region in the German East and in the Danube/Bavarian Forest region in the West, Prügl provides a close-up view of the power politics involved in government policies and programs.

In identifying mechanisms of power (refusal, co-optation, compromise, normalization, and silencing of difference), Prügl illustrates how these mechanisms operate in arguments over gender relations within the state. Her feminist-constructivist approach to global restructuring as a gendered process brings into view multiple levels of governance and the variety of gender constructions operating in different societies. Ultimately, Prügl offers a new understanding of patriarchy as diverse, contested, and in flux.

Jacket photograph: © iStockphoto.com/Wojtek Kryczka

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front cover of Turkey's 'Self' and 'Other' Definitions in the Course of the EU Accession Process
Turkey's 'Self' and 'Other' Definitions in the Course of the EU Accession Process
Melek Saral
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
While Turkey in recent years has experienced an exhaustive accession process to join the EU -a long desired aim-, at the same time it has been increasing its involvement across the Middle East, leading to a debate over whether it is altering its focus from West to East. This book reveals that a shift in focus can be seen through analysis of the Turkish political elites' definitions of "self" and "other" that were established as part of the EU accession process. Melek Saral uses these definitions to help us better understand the shift that Turkey is currently undergoing.
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Veto Power
Institutional Design in the European Union
Jonathan B. Slapin
University of Michigan Press, 2011

"This is a terrific book. The questions that Slapin asks about intergovernmental conferences (IGCs) in the European Union are extraordinarily important and ambitious, with implications for the EU and for international cooperation more generally. Furthermore, Slapin's theorizing of his core questions is rigorous, lucid, and accessible to scholarly readers without extensive formal modeling background . . . This book is a solid, serious contribution to the literature on EU studies."
---Mark Pollack, Temple University

"An excellent example of the growing literature that brings modern political science to bear on the politics of the European Union."
---Michael Laver, New York University

Veto rights can be a meaningful source of power only when leaving an organization is extremely unlikely. For example, small European states have periodically wielded their veto privileges to override the preferences of their larger, more economically and militarily powerful neighbors when negotiating European Union treaties, which require the unanimous consent of all EU members.

Jonathan B. Slapin traces the historical development of the veto privilege in the EU and how a veto---or veto threat---has been employed in treaty negotiations of the past two decades. As he explains, the importance of veto power in treaty negotiations is one of the features that distinguishes the EU from other international organizations in which exit and expulsion threats play a greater role. At the same time, the prominence of veto power means that bargaining in the EU looks more like bargaining in a federal system. Slapin's findings have significant ramifications for the study of international negotiations, the design of international organizations, and European integration.

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front cover of Whose Liberty is it Anyway?
Whose Liberty is it Anyway?
Europe at the Crossroads
Stefan Auer
Seagull Books, 2012

Europe's turn of fortune is humbling, humiliating and, perhaps, irreversible. What went wrong, and when? Europe's most audacious moment occurred sometime between 1989 and 1991, a brief period that encapsulated both the demise of communism in Central and Eastern Europe and the bold steps forward on the path towards an 'ever-closer union' in Western Europe. Twenty years later, the dramatic failures of economic and political integration have forced Europeans to re-consider the underpinnings of their project. The economic crisis of 2010-11 also manifested itself as a crisis of European democracy. Old questions acquired new meaning: Is it possible to maintain conditions for self-government while undermining the nation-state? What are the limits of solidarity? Can Europe be truly united through its common history, or its common currency? Is further unity in Europe even desirable?

In Whose Liberty Is It Anyway? Stefan Auer exposes the limits of the current European project by interrogating some of its many incongruities, particularly when it comes to its commitment to freedom. The author argues that the calls for more European solidarity are not convincing when Europe's poor are asked to pay for the mistakes of those who are more fortunate. Europe's unity, Auer asserts, can only be maintained by accepting its limitations and by beginning to fulfill some of its many promises.

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