Book Review: Andreas Dür and Gemma Mateo, Insiders versus Outsiders: Interest Group Politics in Multilevel Europe
| Date | 01 November 2017 |
| Author | Direnç Kanol |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929917716889 |
| Published date | 01 November 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsEurope |
664 Political Studies Review 15(4)
viewpoint’ (p. 3). It does so brilliantly. It uses
the multiple crises facing the European Union
(EU) – the annexation of Crimea in the
Ukraine, the euro debt crisis, and the refugee/
migrant crisis – to examine the deeper ‘limita-
tions, contradictions, and crisis tendencies’ of
EU integration. Magnus Ryner and Alan
Cafruny have produced a text which should be
at the forefront of shaping debates on the future
of Europe’s political economy.
The text is essentially constituted by three
sections. The first focuses on the key theoreti-
cal debates surrounding EU integration.
Critiquing the ‘sanitised, idealised, and teleo-
logical assumptions’ that shape liberal and
realist (and their more contemporary variants)
analysis, Ryner and Cafruny shift attention to
the possibilities offered by neo-Marxism and
neo-Gramscian perspectives.
The second section of the book then applies
this critique and their alternative. There is a
focus on a range of key topics, both important
in their own right and also as developed in a
complementary manner to create a coherent
whole. These include the origins and develop-
ment of European Monetary Union (EMU) and
how this shaped trajectories towards the euro
crisis, the history and role of welfare state
capitalism(s) and the future of the ‘social
dimension’ of EU policy and the cohering of an
EU ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ as integration has
deepened and widened.
The third section then shifts attention to a
global scale. It analyses how EU integration
and European capitalism have been, and con-
tinues to be, shaped under the ‘shadow’ of US
hegemony and the EU’s interaction with the
global South–both in its near eastern and
southern neighbourhood and beyond when
focusing on the ‘question of China’.
The text ends on a pessimistic note about
the possibility of pursuing more socially equi-
table and just routes out of the crises identi-
fied. Given the analysis which precedes it,
this is a legitimate conclusion. However, there
is no systematic engagement with debates
about the role of various ‘transnational protest
groups’. Through a greater engagement with
actors and actions that both resist and develop
alternatives, the argument that such groups
face an almost insurmountable set of ‘struc-
tural limitations’ would be more convincing.
Without it, we are left with a domination-
oriented analysis which has been well cri-
tiqued in recent years, although that is not rec-
ognised (see ‘Disrupting the European Crisis:
A Critical Political Economy of Contestation,
Subversion and Escape’ by Huke et al. (2015)
in New Political Economy).
Jamie Jordan
(University of Nottingham)
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929917718670
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Insiders versus Outsiders: Interest Group
Politics in Multilevel Europe by Andreas
Dür and Gemma Mateo. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2015. 270pp., £55.00 (h/b), ISBN
9780198785651
Andreas Dür and Gemma Mateo provide the
reader with survey and interview findings
obtained by contacting interest groups in
Austria, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Spain and
the Czech Republic. The main argument of
the book is that group type along with mate-
rial resources is a determining factor for
explaining interest groups’ strategies, access
and influence.
Citizen groups defend the interests of the
wider society, whose members do not belong to
any single profession. Labour unions represent
the employees. Professional associations defend
the interests of people who belong to a specific
profession, such as doctors and architects.
Business associations comprise firms and asso-
ciations of firms, so they defend the interests of
the business sector. Collective action problems
are more severe for citizen groups compared
with labour unions or professional associations.
Business associations overcome the collective
action threat more easily compared to any group
type. Material resources augment the effect of
group type.
The authors label the resource-rich business
associations ‘insiders’ and non-business groups
‘outsiders’ in multilevel Europe. Compared to
the latter, the former use more direct lobbying
practices, they lobby more frequently, and they
lobby at both the national and the European
Union (EU) levels. Resource-rich business
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