Book Review: Philippe C. Schmitter, How to Democratize the European Union...And Why Bother? (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000, 150 pp., no price given hbk.)
| Author | Erik De Vries |
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| DOI | 10.1177/03058298000290030927 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Book Reviews
975
with comparativ ist approache s, and locate integrati on within a global(isi ng)
environmen t.
The only criti cism of Rosamond’s work is the obviou s and easy one of
omissions. Three of them ca me to my mind: First, the u nderplaying o f inte gral
federalism with in the federalist movement, whic h would have led Rosamond to de-
emphasise the t erritorial assumptions of federa lism, and put more stress on what he
calls ’de-cen tralist’ or ’gradualist’ federa lism. Second, the negl ecting of Neo-
Gramscian anal yses by Otto Holman, Henk Overbeek, and others, whi ch is slightly
surprising given Rosamond’s discussion of M arxism. For the current theoretical
debate, the se Neo-Gramscian approa ches would have been cle arly more important.
Third, the rather minimal spa ce that is given to discourse analysis; h ere, I would
see a vibrant bra nch of con structivism emerging that Rosamon d mentions o nly in
passing.
But all o f these points do not, in any case, d iminish the exceptio nal value of this
marvellous book to anyone interested in integratio n theory, but first and foremost
to stud ents of integra tion, for whom theory often u sed to be hard to get a grip on .
Now, t hey have an introduction at hand t hat is bette r than many textbook s
published in other fields.
THOMAS DIEZ
Thomas Diez is Lectu rer in International Relatio ns Theory
at the Universit y of Birmingha m
Philippe C. Schmitter, How to Democratize the European Union...And Why
Bother? (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000, 150 pp., no price given
hbk.).
This is an ambitious book. If the European U nion presage s the post-Westphalian
future, the prospects for democracy are bleak, and remedies for the democratic
deficit remote. The advent of the European polity coincided with that of post-
everything theories of leg itimacy, with the result that scholars have found in the
imaginary, near-fut ure EU a bat tleground on whic h to play out comp eting
perspective s. No longer th e arena of Monnet’s petits pas, the EU is the putative
laboratory for advoca tes of Habe rmasian intersubjectivity, Kant ian cosmopoli tans,
defenders of any number of identity-ba sed politic s, environ mentalists, a nd eve n
Hegelians. Into this fray Schmitte r enters and proposes his comparativ ely modest,
but pragmati c and complex sche me to democrati se the EU.
From any o f the comp eting positions just ment ioned, Schmitter’s propo sal makes
a co mparatively easy target. But Sc hmitter’s focus is practical throughout, and his
practicalit y is this book’s greatest achievement . His ac count begins with an
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