Building States Without Society: European Union Enlargement and the Transfer of Eu Social Policy to Poland and Hungary

Focusing on the 2004 englargement of the European Union, Building States without Society highlights the real limits of cross-national rule transfer even when power is uneven between rule-makers and rule-takers.

Investigating whether and how European Union social policy spread to Poland and Hungary before the 2004 enlargement and up until 2005, Sissenich (political science, Indiana U.) addressed three questions. The first is how effective the Union is at transferring its rules onto nation states under conditions of power asymmetry. A second is whether non-state as well as government actors participate in the rule transfer. The third is whether the mechanisms that drive the rule transfer are rational cost-benefit calculations based on power asymmetry, or social learning based on perceptions of appropriateness. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)