Synopses & Reviews
Contributors to this volume use newly available sources to challenge the widely held assumption that European integration developed in the 1980s. They demonstrate how various networks influenced constitutional choices and policy decisions after World War II.
Review
"This is a wonderful addition to the literature on the complex history of European integration governance. The editors have put together a collection of well-researched and insightful essays that address the evolution of various transnational networks that have helped make Europe the complex entity it is today. An added strength of this volume is the inclusion of an analysis of transatlantic networks which adds a broader dimension to our understanding of the development of European integration. A superb book!" -- Jussi Hanhimäki, Professor of International History and Politics, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland
"This impressive volume brings together a new generation of contemporary historians of European integration who locate the dynamics of integration in transgovernmental and transnational governance networks. Abandoning the state-centrism still present in much of the writings on European integration by historians and political scientists, the contributions to this book are interested in studying the origins, evolution and impact of political networks in an era often claimed to be dominated by the omnipotent nation-state." -- Berthold Rittberger, Professor of Political Science and Contemporary History, University of Mannheim, Germany
Synopsis
Shows that networks in European integration governance were not a phenomenon that developed in the 1980s out of a 'hollowing out' of the nation-states in the 1970s. Based throughout on newly accessible sources, the authors discuss various networks and show how they contributed to constitutional choices and policy decisions after World War II.
About the Author
WOLFRAM KAISER is Professor of European Studies at the University of Portsmouth, UK, and Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, Belgium. He has published widely on European integration, Christian democracy and the history of globalization.
BRIGITTE LEUCHT is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, UK. She has published widely on European integration and transatlantic relations.
MICHAEL GEHLER is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Hildesheim, Germany and Senior Fellow at the Centre for European Integration Studies at the University of Bonn, Germany. He has published widely on the history of European integration, Austria and Germany.
Table of Contents
Transnational Networks in European Integration Governance: Historical Perspectives on an Elusive Phenomenon;
W.Kaiser, B.Leucht &
M.GehlerExpertise and the Creation of a Constitutional Order for Core Europe: Transatlantic Policy Networks in the Schuman Plan Negotiations; B.Leucht
The Bilderberg Group: Promoting European Governance Inside an Atlantic Community of Values; V.Aubourg
The European Committee for Economic and Social Progress: Business Networks between Atlantic and European Communities; S.M.R.Pérez
Informal Politics and the Creation of the European Community: Christian Democratic Networks in the Economic Integration of Europe; W.Kaiser
The Making of the European Union's Constitutional Foundations: The Brokering Role of Legal Entrepreneurs and Networks; A.Vauchez
Shaping the Common Agricultural Policy: Networks and Political Entrepreneurship in the European Commission; A-C.L.Knudsen
Brandt, Kreisky and Palme as Policy Entrepreneurs: Social Democratic Networks in Europe's Policy towards the Middle East; O.Rathkolb
Saving Migrants: A transnational Network Supporting Supranational Bird Protection Policy; J.H.Meyer
On the Long and Winding Road to European Union Membership: Austrian Party Elites in Transnational Political Networks; M.Gehler
Plus ça Change? Diachronic Change in Networks in European Integration Governance; W.Kaiser