Book Review: Europe: The Hour of Europe: Western Powers and the Breakup of Yugoslavia
| Published date | 01 May 2013 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1478-9302.12016_110 |
| Author | Vladimir Đorđević |
| Date | 01 May 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
even in this case, the arguments fail to consider in
depth the substantive implications of the constitutional
transformations of the European Union.
Agustín José Menéndez
(University of Léon)
Creative Reconstructions: Multilateralism and
European Varieties of Capitalism after 1950 by
Orfeo Fioretos. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press,
2010. 245pp., $49.95, ISBN 9780801449697
The book asks what explains the diversity in national
patterns of institutional reform in post-Second World
War Britain,France and Ger many.With the ‘varieties of
capitalism’ tradition as a starting point – and drawing
on a combination of historical institutionalism and
behavioural economics – Fioretos’ answer is that when
governments aligned national and multilateral institu-
tions in ways that were incentive compatible and
ensured that adaptation losses were small and maladap-
tation costs low for pivotal sectors of the business
community, governments were able to construct suffi-
ciently broad coalitions within the business community
to implement successfully their economic reform
agendas. In other words, the manner in which govern-
ments reconciled domestic reform with their multi-
lateral commitments shaped the outcome of domestic
reforms in the three countries.
Arguing that the comparative capitalism literature
has tended to treat national economies as closed
systems of governance, Fioretos emphasises the inde-
pendent effect that multilateral designs have in building
coalitions of business interests in the domestic setting.
Central to his argument stands the so-called ‘design
problem’which concer ns hownational economic insti-
tutions are integrated internally within a state and how
they are externally integrated into the international
environment. As argued by the author, ‘the broader
implication of the design problem is that the degree to
which institutions at the national and multilateral levels
are incentive compatible affects the long-term willing-
ness of domestic groups to support the national eco-
nomic reform agenda of governments’ (p. 172).
In his case study of structural economic reform in
four areas of economic governance across six decades in
Britain, France and Germany, Fioretos shows how the
institution of multilateralism protects some features of
national models while at other times it undermines key
features of domestic reform programmes.The pr imary
contribution of the book lies not so much in claiming
that the EU mattered for the economic development of
its three most important economies – that would
hardly surprise anyone – but rather in providing a new
set of theoretical lenses through which to analyse how
the multilateral commitments of governments pro-
foundly shaped the institutional evolution of economic
governance in Britain, France and Germany.The book
takes a number of important questions head on, for
example: why economic governance changes incre-
mentally or dramatically; how governments gain elite
support for their reforms; and how the domestic and
international levels are interdependent. In the effort to
answer these questions the book is – on both an
empirical and theoretical level – ambitious,comprehen-
sive and rich.
Martin B. Carstensen
(Copenhagen Business School)
The Hour of Europe: Western Powers and the
Breakup of Yugoslavia by Josip Glaurdic´. New
Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2011. 432pp.,
£40.00, ISBN 9780300166293
The Hour of Europe is Josip Glaurdic´’s contribution to
the study of the Yugoslav crisis of the late 1980s, and
Western diplomacy’s response to it. Bear ing in mind
that the issue of the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia
has been a point of contention among scholars for a
number of years now, Glaurdic´’s volume is very much
aimed at shattering misinterpretations that still find
their way into academic literature on this topic.
In that respect, the author’s main arguments con-
cerning the Western diplomatic engagement and the
Yugoslav crisis are: first, that ‘lack of political will’ of
major Wester n actors was demonstrated in the impo-
tence of these actors in stopping the war in the Social-
ist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY); second,
that discord over the crisis in the SFRY among major
Western powers, predominantly in the European Com-
munity camp between France and the UK, on the one
side, and united Germany, on the other, was significant
and had to be gradually reduced; and third, that the
post-Cold War rhetor ic of the West, although it recog-
nised a beginning of a new international relations
agenda following the break-up of the USSR,the f all of
communism and the unification project in Europe
BOOK REVIEWS 295
© 2013 TheAuthors. Political Studies Review © 2013 Political Studies Association
Political Studies Review: 2013, 11(2)
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