Book Reviews: Europe's Ambiguous Unity: Conflict and Consensus in the Post-Maastricht Era, The Common Agricultural Policy, Energy Policy in the European Union, Global Europe: The European Union in World Affairs, The Transformation of Political Community, Ideas and Think Tanks in Contemporary Britain, Volume II, Think Tanks of the New Right, The British General Election of 1997, et al, New Labour Triumphs: Britain at the Polls, Labour's Landslide, World Government by Stealth: The Future of the United Nations, Casualties of the New World Order: The Causes of Failure of UN Missions to Civil Wars, The Contract of Mutual Indifference: Political Philosophy after the Holocaust, Reconstructing Realism: Between Power Politics and Cosmopolitan Ethics, Political Economy of Modem Capitalism: Mapping Convergence and Diversity, Contemporary Capitalism: The Embeddedness of Institutions, Political Development in Pacific Asia

DOI10.1111/1467-9248.00207
Date01 June 1999
Published date01 June 1999
Subject MatterBook Reviews
Book Reviews
Alan W. Cafruny and Carl Lankowski (eds), Europe's Ambiguous Unity: Con¯ict
and Consensus in the Post-Maastricht Era (Boulder CO, Lynne Rienner, 1997),
viii 271 pp., £55.00 ISBN 1 55587 224 7.
Wyn Grant, The Common Agricultural Policy (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1997),
xii 244 pp., £42.50 ISBN 0 333 60465 2, £13.99 pbk ISBN 0 333 60466 0.
Janne Haaland Matla
Âry, Energy Policy in the European Union (Basingstoke, Macmillan,
1997), xiii 174 pp., £40.00 ISBN 0 333 64348 8, £12.99 pbk ISBN 0 33364349 6.
Christopher Piening, Global Europe: the European Union in World Aairs (Boulder CO,
Lynne Rienner [distributed in the UK by the Eurospan Group], 1997), xii 252 pp.,
£34.95 ISBN 1 55587 694 3, £14.50 pbk ISBN 1 55587 700 1.
In 1988, Jacques Delors famously predicted that `in 10 years, 80% of economic legisla-
tion, perhaps even tax and social, will come from the European [Union (EU)]'. Even
with a single currency on the horizon, there remains controversy about the verity of
Delors' claim (leaving aside taxation, about which he clearly was wrong). What is not
controversial is that the literature on the EU is exploding.
These four books come (two each) from Macmillan's remarkably ambitious `Euro-
pean Union series', and from Lynne Rienner, an American publisher with an impressive
list of EU titles. Scholarship on the EU has a notoriously negative reputation amongst
non-specialists (especially comparativists). It is often dismissed as atheoretical, journal-
istic or even propagandistic. So: is our understanding of the EU advancing as fast as the
literature is expanding?
Cafruny and Lankowski's edited collection embodies the best and worst of the
EU literature. Ostensibly, Europe's Ambiguous Unity is concerned with the paradox of
accelerating European integration and rising Euroscepticism. Unfortunately, it ends up
being a rather chequered collection of essays. The editors' introductory preface is,
by turns, thoughtful and confusing, provocative and incomprehensible. Hooghe and
Marks oer what is perhaps the clearest, most convincing account ever of `multi-level
governance', which has become the leading alternative to traditional, statist theories.
Michael Shackleton presents a penetrating, contemplative, essential analysis of the EU's
legitimacy crisis.
Elsewhere, we ®nd treatments of the EU as a neoliberal, German-dominated con-
spiracy, an opaque analysis of the `information society', and ®ve uneven chapters
devoted to `alternative visions of Union'. Pia Christina Wood does an admirable job of
explaining how and why French political parties lined up on the EU during Mitterrand's
long reign. The chapter which follows is the longest (by far) in the book: exclusively
devoted to the German Greens, it may be useful to specialists but otherwise it reveals
that we are all sometimes poor editors of our own work. Michael Keating's chapter on
Scotland is more about British territorial politics than `visions of Union', but it is
interesting nonetheless, as is a subsequent chapter on Ireland. Christine Ingebritsen
provides a useful overview of Nordic responses to the EU, even if she (implausibly)
lumps together Finland with the far more Eurosceptic Sweden, which certainly has not
`readily accepted supranationalism' (p. 252). And there the book ends: a good idea that
lost something in the execution.
In contrast, Wyn Grant's Common Agricultural Policy is tightly focused and argued.
While eschewing theoretical debates about European integration, Grant oers several
new and interesting angles on the CAP: `the transformation of modern farming into a
more input intensive, pro®t-orientated activity' (p. 3), linkages between the farming
sector and the food processing industry, and reform pressuresarising from globalization.
Early chapters cover the broad political context, the CAP's historical development, and
#Political Studies Association 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 CowleyRoad, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Political Studies (1999), XLVI, 381±392

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