This article was downloaded by: [Western Kentucky University]On: 04 November 2014, At: 14:20Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number:1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street,London W1T 3JH, UK

West European PoliticsPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fwep20

Europe: Past, present,futureJonathan Story a ba St Antony's College , Oxfordb INSEAD , FontainebleauPublished online: 03 Dec 2007.

To cite this article: Jonathan Story (1996) Europe: Past, present, future, WestEuropean Politics, 19:4, 820-830, DOI: 10.1080/01402389608425169

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01402389608425169

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of allthe information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on ourplatform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensorsmake no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy,completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Anyopinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinionsand views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed byTaylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be reliedupon and should be independently verified with primary sources ofinformation. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions,claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and otherliabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectlyin connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private studypurposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution,reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of accessand use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Wes

tern

Ken

tuck

y U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

20 0

4 N

ovem

ber

2014

Review Article

Europe: Past, Present, Future

JONATHAN STORY*

Jean Monnet: The First Statesman of Interdependence. By FRANÇOISDUCHÊNE. New York, Norton, 1994. Pp.458, notes, sources, publications, index.£22 (cloth), £10.95 (paper) ISBN 0-393-03497-6 and -393-31490-1.

Elusive Union: The Process of Economic and Monetary Union in Europe. ByKENNETH DYSON. London, Longman, 1994. Pp.xiii + 361, index. £40 (cloth),£17.99 (paper). ISBN 0-582-225132-X and 0-582-25131-1.

The Road to Monetary Union in Europe: The Emperor, the Kings, and the Genies.By TOMMASO PADOA-SCHIOPPA, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994. Pp.286,index. £30 (cloth). ISBN 0-19-828843-3.

The Rotten Heart of Europe, The Dirty War for Europe's Money. By BERNARDCONNALLY. London: Faber, 1995. Pp.xvii + 427, references, index. £17.50 (cloth).ISBN 0-571-17520-1.

Europe: The Strange Superpower. By DAVID BUCHAN. Aldershot: Dartmouth,1993. Pp.181 index. £35 (cloth); £17.50 (paper). ISBN 1-85521-441-5 and -439-3.

The European Sisyphus: Essays on Europe, 1964-1994. By STANLEYHOFFMANN, Boulder, Westview Press, 1995. Pp.x + 313, index. £58.50 (cloth);£13.50 (paper). ISBN 0-81-332-3200 and -2381-9.

Redefining Europe, New Patterns of Conflict and Cooperation. Edited by HUGHMIALL. London: Pinter. The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1994. Pp.293.Index. £45 (cloth); £14.99 (paper). ISBN 1-85567-257-X and -258-8.

Governing the New Europe. Edited by JACKHAYWARD and EDWARD C. PAGE.Oxford: Polity, 1995. Pp.418, index. £45 (cloth); £14.99 (paper). ISBN 0-7456-1219-9 and -1220-2.

The two central events of the past decade to have transformed Europe are not dealtwith directly in this collection from the many books now available on the end of theCold War, and the consequences flowing from it. The process of German unity andthe resulting transformation of Europe has been analysed in a definitive work byPhilip Zelikow and Condoleeza Rice.1 Zelikow and Rice served in the White Houseduring these years and combed through a wide range of sources in Russian, Germanand English, as well as interviewing nearly all the major protagonists in the drama.

* St Antony's College, Oxford; INSEAD, Fontainebleau

West European Politics, Vol.19, No.4 (October 1996), pp.820-830PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Wes

tern

Ken

tuck

y U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

20 0

4 N

ovem

ber

2014

REVIEW ARTICLE: EUROPE - PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE 821

The story they tell is of President George Bush's clear backing for German unityfrom early 1989 on, and Chancellor Helmut Kohl's creative use of the opportunitiesto ensure that the pace and direction of German unification was set in Bonn, andnot in Moscow, and most definitely not in Paris, London or Rome. Germany'sunification, as this landmark book clearly demonstrates, was made in Washingtonand in Bonn: the British and French emerge 'as somewhat secondary players'(p.367).

The collapse of the Soviet Union is recounted by Archie Brown, in a magisterialwork, tracing the collapse of the Soviet Union through the political career ofGorbachev,2 his emergence as a possible reformer in the late 1970s, his swift ascentto power, and his election on 11 March 1985 as secretary general of the party - withthe favourable vote of Gromyko, the veteran foreign affairs spanned the decadesfrom Stalin's purges, through the world war, the creation of the United Nations,and then the long trajectory of the cold war, when Soviet foreign policy gaveoverriding priority to consolidating communist parties in power in what was thencalled 'eastern' Europe, and to relations with the United States. The unintendedconsequences of Gorbachev's efforts to reform the Soviet system was the end ofthe bi-polar world, within whose confines 'western' Europe had been built. The evermore radical changes introduced in economic affairs, in the political system, inforeign relations and in the nationality question - Brown argues - were 'the onlyway in which the Communist system could have been peacefully transformed'(p.317). Gorbachev, he concludes, was one of Russia's greatest reformers, and 'theindividual who made the most profound impact on world history in the second halfof the twentieth century'.5

With the exception of Francois Duchene's political biography on Jean Monnet,(1888-1979), the books reviewed here are in different genres. Duchene's studyrecounts and analyses the Frenchman's activity as 'an entrepreneur in the publicinterest' seeking to create a new European order founded on the principle ofequality among its states and peoples (p.61).Of the other books, three concentrateon European monetary union: Dyson's excellent volume presenting an analysis ofthe policy process surrounding monetary union; Padoa-Schioppa's illustrates theuse to which ideas may be put by a distinguished servant of the Italian state; andConnally's is a passionate plea from a former member of the European Commissionagainst what he considers to be a fatally flawed policy driven by atavistic passions,fears and ambitions. The other four feature as 'The Happy, The Stoic, and the Bold'.Buchan's Europe: The Strange Superpower is a jolly account, written with the supportof the European Commission, of the major events leading up to, and away from thesigning of the Maastricht Treaty, from the perspective of an astute Financial Timescorrespondent, posted to Brussels for the crucial years 1988-92.3 'Might the EC -so far a pretty tightly organised unit - become ramshackle and so gradually go theway of the Hapsburg empire?' asks Buchan rhetorically (p.8), concluding serenely:'A loose political federation, sitting on top of a commercial and monetary union butplaying an active, unSwiss role in the world to the best of its ability, should beambition enough for Europe in the years to come' (p.173).

This happy hope for a federal future is not unanimously shared by all authors orcontributors. Stanley Hoffmann, the doyen of US Europeanists, presents acollection of well-known essays written from 1964 to the present on the subject ofEurope, where he likens the European integration project to Sisyphus, foreverrolling his rock uphill, only for it to roll back again, in a never-ending cycle of hopeand despair. Hugh Miall and his colleagues make a bold effort to assess the situation

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Wes

tern

Ken

tuck

y U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

20 0

4 N

ovem

ber

2014

822 WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS

in Europe after German unity and the Soviet collapse, while Jack Hayward andEdward Page, in an edited volume of consistently high quality, present what maybe the first English-language attempt to apply a comparative approach to the wholeof Europe. What follows is a brief presentation of some of the main books underreview, with comments attached, followed by four themes that may be identified ascentral to the new Europe.

Duchene is the ideal biographer for Jean Monnet, with whom he worked asan aide, and many of whose friends and acquaintances he knew or had met. Themost important of these were Americans, such as George Ball and Dean Acheson,or the two ambassadors, Jack Tuthill and Robert Schaetzel. Monnet's ententecordiale, as Duchene points out, was first and foremost with the United States, whilethe thin steel threads of European integration ran through Washington, Paris andBonn (p.361). Duchene tells the story of how Monnet began his working life in thefamily's cognac business, negotiated international war supplies during World WarI, grew disappointed over the failings of the League of Nations, and operated inWashington under a British passport in 1940 in the British Supply Council. Thereis a fascinating account of Monnet in North Africa, initially favourable to GeneralGiraud as the man with the big battalions and a political non-entity. Monnet cameround to support de Gaulle, for whom the revival of France was first and foremost'a victory of political principle over material power' (p.122). Monnet neverunderstood de Gaulle, suspecting him of dictatorial ambitions. Duchene quotesMonnet as baffled by military questions with a statement that emanates straightfrom the heart of the French bourgeoisie: 'mental processes in that field are notnormal' (my italics).

What Monnet meant by normality is nowhere explicitly defined in this majorwork on one of the EU's founding figures, but Monnet's interpretation emergesfrom the pages as a compound of open markets, non-discrimination on grounds ofnationality, a burning ambition to overcome Europe's fragmentation seen as themain cause of its ever more savage wars, and the aspiration to 'civilianise internationalrelations' (p.388) by introducing supranational organisation and international lawas forces to pacify the anarchy characteristic of traditional statecraft. Yet Monnetalso served the French state, in heading the French delegation in the coal and steeltalks, while his policies were not necessarily opposed by Couve de Murville, deGaulle's formidable minister for foreign affairs.4 The major chapters in the bookare those dealing with Monnet's central role in the First Plan to modernise theFrench economy; his relations with Schuman in launching the Coal and SteelCommunity; and in later years his organisation of the Action Committee for aUnited States of Europe, which supported the establishment of the common marketand kept the flame of monetary union alight in the 1960s. Duchene's verdict onMonnet and Schuman is that together they 'switched the points of Europeanstatecraft traditional since the Middle Ages' (p. 257).

Kenneth Dyson's Elusive Union concentrates on the policy process of theexchange rate mechanism and monetary union, very much in the spirit of Monnet,to whom the creation of permanent institutions were vital to maintain a momentumand to retain the experience required to overcome Europe's fragmentation. AsDuchene quotes Monnet: 'institutions, adequately structured, can accumulate andtransmit the wisdom of successive governments'(p.238-9). Dyson's central argu-ment is that the process is best understood 'as composed of a distinct set of inter-dependent bargaining relations and rules of the game, embedded in a frameworkof structures that they have a limited, and fluctuating capacity to influence' (p.xi).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Wes

tern

Ken

tuck

y U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

20 0

4 N

ovem

ber

2014

REVIEW ARTICLE: EUROPE - PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE 823

There are three elements to his analysis of the nature of the European integrationprocess: it is shaped by the will and capability of the central actors involved; by aset of interlocking bargaining relations that interact with key rules of the game; andthe sources of structural power in the economy, which together generate a senseand reality of lack of control in any one sector. Part I provides an extensive overviewof previous attempts at monetary unions, from the Latin Monetary Union, set upunder Louis Napoleon, to the gold standard, the Bretton Woods system, the USinspired efforts in 1949 to outline a timetable and a central bank, the victory of theBritish-inspired European Payments Union, which provided for eight years a stableframework for international payments, and included western Europe, the Frenchfranc zone and the whole sterling area - in other words about four-fifths of worldtrade. It is scarcely surprising under these circumstances that US diplomacy (Ball,Tuthill and Schaetzel to the fore) should have pressed for multilateral convertibility,undermining the EPU and in effect creating a dollar-exchange standard for theworld, which President Nixon then consolidated by his announcement in August1971, taking the dollar off the fixed price of gold, established by Roosevelt in 1934.Dyson's story thus covers the various attempts at moving to monetary union in theyears 1969-72,1977-80,and 19-92, in counterpart to the unilateralist dollar policiesof successive US governments, and the spread and growth of world financialmarkets.

Part II subjects his fine historical account to the Procrustean bed of his analyticalscheme. Negotiations in the years 1987-93 were informed by the French state'sdetermination to use the bilateral relationship with Germany, institutionalised in the1963 Treaty, and through the accretive mechanisms and fora of the European Unionto make a political takeover bid of the Bundesbank "in the name of Europe'. TheBundesbank countered by use of its structural power over the DM, and thecurrencies in and out of the exchange rate mechanism, to shape the rules of thegame. Its representatives drew on deep public support for the DM as arch-symbolof post-war German success and stability. They warned against a monetary union,without an adequate political roof. But in late 1989 Kohl placed his man, Tietmeyer,in the Bundesbank; Kohl insisted that the Bundesbank support the French francon the foreign exchanges; indeed, paradoxically, in August 1993, when the Bundes-bank finally broke free from the narrow bands of fluctuation between currenciespermitted under the formal exchange rate mechanism, it found its independencefrom Kohl's political agenda compromised by a reputation beholden to the financialmarkets (Connally, p.354). Padoa-Schioppa's sharp judgement stands: 'Themonetary history of Western Europe between 1973 and 1993 can be seen as thehistory of the rise and decline of a Deutschmark system' (p.15). As in the case ofthe US currency, it was just not possible for a national currency to acquireinternational status and run a monetary policy for a group of countries.

Dyson then traces the growth of sound money ideas, and in particular the twocontending theories on monetary union: the credibility theory, which in effect statesthat only central banks independent of governments enjoy 'credibility' in the eyesof the financial markets, and the optimum currency area theory where the emphasiswas placed much more on the relationship between a sovereign monetary area andthe adjustment process in the real economy. As Dyson correctly points out, theMaastricht Treaty's contents on EMU were inspired by the credibility thesis, whichturned out to be none too robust a theory in the face of events, while the financialmarkets concentrated on 'fundamentals'. A final chapter is devoted to the changesin financial markets and trade interdependence, where Dyson makes the crucial

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Wes

tern

Ken

tuck

y U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

20 0

4 N

ovem

ber

2014

824 WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS

point that the effort to establish nominal convergence on the basis of financialcriteria presupposes an ability of national economies to adapt their marketinstitutions one to another. As he indicates, those institutions are more likely toconverge under the dual pressure of competition on product markets, and by theworkings of the EU financial services area. Overall, Dyson concludes that the processhas a 'hollow core', where no single actor is in control and there is no single power-broking centre.

Stanley Hoffmann concurs in his collection , sounding a warning that the sameproblems as plagued the European enterprise at its beginning plague the EU today.First, there is the lack of a clear European project. 'Europe', he writes, 'is a divinitywhich means different things to the different faithful' (p.32). For Hoffmann, Monnetoffered a sleep-walker's method, where the like-minded wander in a certain direction,none too concerned about the why's and wherefore's, but much preoccupied byprocedure. The result has been to create a Byzantine structure, whose inhabitantsseek to focus popular energies on a utilitarian calculus of material rewards, and in'a logic that places material gain at the apex of social values' (p.64). Strain as hemay, Hoffmann cannot bring himself to consider Monnet as a Founding Father,other than of a 'Europe' without spiritual vitality, and 'that remains a purelyeconomic and bureaucratic construction and that shows few signs of becoming anation' (p.311).

Second, the diversity of national situations in the world polity and marketplacehas impeded the quest for a common foreign and security policy. In earlier days,France or Britain were distracted from the European theatre by colonial wars andextra-European attachments, while the Federal Republic regularly subordinatedrelations with its European neighbours to its prior relations with the United States,notably on matters financial and military. In the 1990s, that pattern was reconfirmedin the two crucial years of 1989-1990, as Germany moved to unity. Indeed, asZelikow and Rice indicate, Maastricht was the tribute paid by Kohl to French dismayand frustration, and a token to the French of German credentials as good Europeans(Zelikov, Rice, p.365). High politics, in this view, drove Maastricht, and not soundeconomic policy, as defined in the preamble of the Rome Treaty.

Third, the internal politics of European states are diverse constructs, forged overtime with a propensity to define interests in singular ways, with their own precedentsand past experiences, and their own internal dynamics and rules. The point is madeby Anthony Smith in his superb chapter in the Hayward/Page volume, when heargues that Europeans have no collective identity, no spiritual centre for worshipat the same altar:

Where, one might ask, are the sacred shrines of 'Europe', which are theEuropean sites of pilgrimage or learning, and where are the heroic places ofEuropean collective remembrance? The answer is all too clear, and it soundsthe death-knell of all that pan-Europeanism represents.9 The sacred andheroic places are the shrines of Europe's warring religions, the battlefieldsof its nations and the grim fields of a continent-wide European slaughter,recounted by each of the European ethnies, nations and religions in their ownnational history textbooks and liturgies, and revisited today in the fields andon the mountains of Bosnia. Without a heritage of binding symbolism,mythology and ritual, the European ideal lacks the ability to present itself to'the people', to impress itself on their hearts and minds with its feasts andceremonies' (p.61).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Wes

tern

Ken

tuck

y U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

20 0

4 N

ovem

ber

2014

REVIEW ARTICLE: EUROPE - PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE 825

Fourth, though, Hoffmann concludes that whereas the idealists of integrationhave ignored the difficulties, the realists have neglected the reality of integration.Using Dyson's scheme, the dynamics in the EU's reiterative bargaining process isillustrated in the internal market programme, and especially in the ongoing sagaon monetary union and the European 'model of society'. Connally's outburst, inwhich he mixes substantial points of policy(on the importance of allowing nationalcurrencies not to devalue, but to revalue, as their economies import capital to financegrowth) with witty, acid and sometimes admiring portraits of the many protagonistson the European stage (Pohl, the Bundesbank President, 'was regarded by Bundes-bank staff as being more interested in the glare of the cameras ("Is that how hekeeps his year-round tan?" they asked)' (Connally, p.85, fn.ll), and with shamefulcomparisons between Helmut Kohl and Adolf Hitler, stands as an illustration toone of Hoffmann's central insights, that European institutions would not just bethe theatre for utilitarian discussions, but would integrate the old flaws and divisionsof Europe into their midst (p.35).

The 'bold' feature in the two edited volumes by Miall and Hayward/Page. Miall'svolume takes the international relations perspective. Part I analyses Europe afterthe Cold War: a chapter by Helen Wallace on the EC and western Europe arguescogently that 'certain parts of the stabilising framework of both EC integration andof some individual EC member states had ... been weakened' (p.20) prior to theyears 1989-92, precisely - in the view of this reviewer - because implementing theinternal market as adumbrated in the Rome Treaty had remained in the domain ofrhetoric, and not of practice. As soon as the liberal market dimension began to benegotiated in the EC's bargaining structures, the facades fell away to reveal theblatant mercantilisms practised by the European states. Not surprisingly, nationalistrhetoric filled out visibly with a content of national tax fiddles, standards, procure-ment practices, subsidies etc.6 The liberal market programme figuratively lanced alarge, European boil, from which much unsightly poison gushed forth in public view.It was not a pleasant sight, and no doubt contributed to public distrust of the patient.

That 'Europe' was in fact a club for the rich, driven by nationalist interests cameas a shock to 'the other Europeans', as Judy Batt shows in her chapter. The crowingin western Europe about the magnetic power of the Union is thus born out: but itis the magnetic power of a self-centred, and myopic EU. Georgiev and Tzenkow'schapter on the Balkans looks even closer at the beast of real existing chauvinism,and draws attention to the frailty of Greek-Turkish relations (which way would theEU member states jump, if, - as some Greeks feared earlier this year - war betweenthe Turks and the Greeks should flare anew? Would they opt to defend their NATOpartners against each other, or would they take sides with Greece, against a NATOmember? And what would the Finns, outside NATO, and whose public joined'Europe' in part for reasons of security, think of either event?). Andrei Zagorskirounds off this part with an enlightened Russian argument for incorporation inwider European structures.

Part II provide a series of key chapters on 'prospects for the wider Europe'.Vincent Cable places the EU in the wider framework of liberalisation strategies inthe 1980s in the West, and makes a reasoned argument for a variable geometryEurope as the most likely to be able to offer the central-eastern Europeans theprospect of market integration with western Europe. Gordon Smith provides amuted answer to the question of whether Western liberal democracy can span theEuropean divide by pointing to the drastic transformations which the societies underthe former party-states must undergo, and George Schopflin reinforces the point

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Wes

tern

Ken

tuck

y U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

20 0

4 N

ovem

ber

2014

826 WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS

'that the domestic travails of the post-communist systems would receive little in theway of support from the West' (p.145). George Kolankiewicz provides an excellentchapter on the breakdown of welfare regimes, and argues that 'class relations withinnations - still mediate relations between nations' (p.155), concluding that 'Europe'ssocial dimension will continue to represent an expression of national politicalprocesses rooted within nation-state identities, rather than supranational ones'(p.161).

This situation, only slightly redefined in a recent major study on social Europe,7

reveals a major flaw in the current monetary union project: given the size and powerof world financial markets, central banks best defend their credibility when thefluctuation bands within the exchange rate mechanism are wide. This allows forconsiderable movement of currencies, in theory, but in practice the trust requiredin reiterative EU bargaining demands that governments get their own fiscal housesin order. That means squeezing expenditures, as revenues flag. Escape from thislow growth trap could come through a single currency, though the credibility of thatcurrency will likely be gauged in part on the readiness of governments to moderategovernment tax and spend policies, and in part through adjustment processes inlabour markets. Movement of labour across national frontiers is low. Fiscal transferstowards the pools of nationally unemployed likely to accumulate within afragmented economic space under a single currency are resented, and fought over.The 'fundamentals' of the EU project are thus shaky - and speculative.

Trevor Taylor introduces time as a lubricant on European affairs in his statementthat 'by the end of the century, a multiplicity of links - military, economic, social,political and cultural- should have been established between the West and the formercommunist world in Europe' (p.182). And Peter van Ham answers the question:Can Institutions Hold Europe together? by pointing out that while European elitesagree on the dangers of re-nationalising policies (while frequently threatening todo so), a 'consensus has gradually been built that the "new Europe" will be basedon many institutions', such as the Council of Europe, NATO or the WEU.

Robert Keohane in Part III rides through at least two hurdles in his statementthat, while existing institutions may have operated well enough in their modest wayto provide information and make commitments credible (p.233), 'common interestswill keep Europe together as a Single Market; but effective realization of the Maas-tricht goals of European Union will require. ... a new consensus on Europe'smission' (p.237). One hurdle is that the combination of the single market, andmonetary policy by independent central banks marching together drives upunemployment rates, and demands changes in labour market policies. So far,pressures have been eased to allow companies to fire; but the disincentives againsthiring are still in place. And unemployment keeps rising. Second, there is little prospectin the foreseeable future that the European peoples and states will achieve acommon sense of community to agree on a common 'mission'. Miall and Mayallconclude in a bold attempt to wrap the many contradictory trends in Europeanpolitics, security, markets and institutions together. The participants in the presentinter-governmental conference could do worse than reading this book as an exercisein humility before they undertake their awesome task of trying to ensure theEuropean peace beyond the Cold War.

The Hayward/Page book reconciles a jollier note with boldness, by a differentfocus on comparative history, politics, markets and international institutions. Thetone is set by Hayward's refusal to extrapolate from the confusion of the mid-1990s,on the grounds that doing so is to cross apons asinonim 'with a pretentiousness that

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Wes

tern

Ken

tuck

y U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

20 0

4 N

ovem

ber

2014

REVIEW ARTICLE: EUROPE - PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE 827

vies with folly in its naivety' (p.2). In the view of this reviewer, the book is a firstrate example of its kind, and much to be recommended to readers (students fordegrees and those labouring in the university of life) who seek some understandingof the complexity in governing the new Europe, and the sceptical but cheerful spiritthat such activity demands. No preconceived notions or 'schools of thought' are onhand to unlock the secrets of the subject - as other authors in this set of books underreview have emphasised. Eclecticism seems to be the name of the game, and aninnate sense of the use of time as an ally while taking some of the symbolism andreligion out of politics. There is no evidence provided in this or other volumes thatBig Leaps to 'Union', predicated on Faith or Fear, (the first incarnated by Kohl andthe second, in vesperal fashion, by Mitterrand) are wise.

Part I grounds Europe in four chapters as 'a constellation of states'. Page tracesthe long historical evolution of the European states, while Smith roots the nationsin their two intertwining forms as civic-territorial or ethnic-genealogical. Hiswarning note is the re-emergence of the latter over the past decades for a multitudeof reasons and his observation that 'what we are witnessing today in Europe is theattempt to provide a new continental container for the old wines of national diversityand identity, not any supersession of the old order of national states and ethnicminorities which has characterised the continent for over four centuries' (p.64).Rose's chapter on the dynamics of democratic regimes makes a forceful statementthat 'The Union is not a community in the sense of its national populations sharinga common identity' (p.89), and adds that revenue-sharing as a measure ofcommunity is evident within the states but not so much between them. A realistperspective would amend that statement by adding that the EU budgets of 1988and 1992 ensure compliant votes from the 'cohesion' states to the projects agreedon by France and Germany, while economists would argue, according to where theysit, on the benefits or costs of transfers.8 Marie Lavigne, in her chapter on marketeconomies as project and practice, 'handbags' free marketeers for seeking to applyan abstraction, and counsels a reading of the French school of regulation theorywhich holds that a variety of institutions that matter exist in addition to 'the market'and 'the state' - a point on which British Tories may now refresh their memories inthe probable hours, days, weeks, nay years, which await them on the oppositionbenches, by consulting Conor Cruise O'Brien's magnificent work on EdmundBurke.9

Part II focuses on comparative political systems at work. Herbert Kitschelt showsthat traditional religious or class cleavages no longer explain voting patterns, somuch as occupational status and personal competences. This goes for both oldwestern and old eastern Europe. Mackie's chapter on political parties illustratesthat across Europe, political parties have increasingly used the resources of the stateto protect their own interests as organisations, thereby stimulating the emergenceof anti-system parties. 'The normative implications of these developments threatento be malign' (p.188). Michael Mezey has better news for readers, in discerning anenhanced role for parliaments as the executives' capacity to dominate parliamentsdeclines - better news not least because some of the earlier arguments from the 1960son 'the decline of parliaments' accompanied assertions by various social engineerson the far-sightedness of the executive, and the even greater far-sightedness ofsupra-national government. Hayward lays any such claims to rest in his chapter onorganised interests, and recalls the curious patterns that mutual learning betweengovernments take, while Page's chapter on administering Europe emphasises thekaleidoscopic changes through which administrations are going as the welfare states

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Wes

tern

Ken

tuck

y U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

20 0

4 N

ovem

ber

2014

828 WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS

come under pressure and state industries are privatised. Alec Stone's excellentchapter on the 'new constitutionalism', has judges and courts across Europe settinglimits to claims either of parliamentary supremacy or of executive excesses.

Part III straddles the no-man's land between comparative politics and inter-national relations. Jolyon Howarth, in an otherwise interesting chapter on the EU'sforeign and security dimension, is too critical - in the eyes of this reviewer - aboutthe UK's apparently strict insistence on intergovernmentalism, as Ha communautaireapproach was, by contrast, anything less than a handy mask for special pleading.The UK is communautaire in its own way, as are all the other rascals representingtheir states in 'Brussels'. Hayward implicitly confirms my point in reminding readersthat announcement of the death of 'national champions are premature', (p.370),despite all the talk about a 'Single Market'. Richard Parry's article on the welfarestates under pressure touches, perhaps too lightly, on the delicate issue that manycitizens across Europe's states now have abundant reason to consider that theirfinancing, set up often over 50 years ago and manipulated over the decades forelectoral reasons by parties of both right and left, may be one major cause of theexorbitant rates of unemployment on the continent. This is the area where, as HelenWallace has cogently argued in the Miall volume, the old constituencies for welfarestates and European integration have begun to break down. They will continue tobreak down unless social scientists take a less reverential view of who gets whatunder the caption of 'solidarity', and reveal and identify the snouts in Europe'scommunal troughs - big farmers, pharmaceutical companies, 'social partners'administering French social (in) security funds, military-industrial iron triangles,etc.

In conclusion, one theme to emerge is that it is yet too early to sanctify Monnetas a founding father of a new Europe which is still riddled with old faultlines.Monnet's methods were 61itist, bureaucratic and secretive. He was never elected.His characteristics are the very failings levelled against the EU now. His supporters,among whom Duchene figures, would place him in august company alongside sucheminent figures of Europe's longest peace, as Winston Churchill, Dean Acheson,Ernest Bevin, Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle injected hispersonal history of resistance into the conduct of French foreign policy when USand Soviet power held Europe, and Germany, divided in a peaceful but unjusttemporary settlement. Whereas Monnet proposed means that corresponded to Europe'sreduced circumstances, de Gaulle based his action on the resurgence of Europeannationalities as bearers of liberties. De Gaulle alone understood the temporarynature of Soviet imperialism, while Monnet with equal reason feared that de Gaulle'saction would perpetuate Europe's fragmentation.

A second theme may be stated in counterpoint to Hoffmann's view that afterunification, Germany has a project, while French and British nationalism are moredefensive. Germany's project was, in the years from 1990-93, to both deepen theEuropean Union and widen it to embrace Austria, Finland, Sweden and in the moredistant future the countries of'the other Europe'. But from 1993 on, when the Bundes-bank manoeuvred, as Connally shows, to free domestic monetary policy from thestraitjacket of the hard Maastricht version of a 'glidepath' to monetary union,German business and workforces in the manufacturing sector have faced theprospect of a weak dollar and a rising DM. Thus, whereas France was demandeurduring the Maastricht negotiations, enabling the Bundesbank to exert its structuralpower as the DM's manager to insist on tough convergence criteria, the Frenchstate may now count on an extended alliance with German business in favour of

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Wes

tern

Ken

tuck

y U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

20 0

4 N

ovem

ber

2014

REVIEW ARTICLE: EUROPE - PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE 829

the French project for monetary union, the end of an independent Bundesbank andthe creation of a European Central Bank, in which the French intend to have adeterminant say. Britain's project is a loosely structured Europe, reflecting thediverse situations of its peoples, and open to trade. But the British government hasfew allies on the continent.

Third, western Europe reconciled Monnet's sleep-walking methods with deGaulle's vision on a Europe stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals by muddlingthrough, postponing differences, settling on incremental changes, resisting thetemptation to dramatise differences and reintroducing in more promising politicalconfigurations policies that had failed to achieve a winning constuency under oneset of circumstances. Playing on the factor of time was a crucial ingredient in thedynamic consensus which went under the broad concept of 'integration'. Maastricht,though, made an 'irreversible' commitment, to which French and German elitesrepeatedly swear their credibility before the markets and their peoples, to move toa single currency by 1999-2002. They thereby deprive the European political processof the opportunistic use of the future as a place to locate present disagreements.That implies that all major unsettled business in Europe must be settled in the nextthree years. It would seem that we are to be visited by the Chinese curse, and livein exciting times.

Fourth, Hayward is undoubtedly correct to argue that the limited politicalarrangements for Europe's diverse polity are too insubstantial to support theambition to form a single market, sustained by a single currency. 'The pride of placeaccorded to business leaders does not fill the vacuum because they constitute a self-perpetuating hard core of non-decision makers who cannot be held accountableand do not feel committed to any particular community, national or European'(p.408). Helen Wallace's warning in the Miall volume on the urgency of finding newconstituencies in support of a new compact for Europe in the changed conditionsof the century's end echoes the same concern, and draws attention to one of Europe'skey weaknesses, illustrated in the condition of Europe's varied welfare states andthe high rates of unemployment in a turbulent world political economy. Withbusiness people at sixes and sevens, European trade unions weakened, and nationalpolitical parties and identities firmly rooted in their traditional bases, the EU'sstructures appear much weaker than their critics give them credit.

A new compact for Europe, putting old wines in new containers, will somehowhave to square the circle between the exigencies of interdependence, the diversityof European traditions, the demands to protect acquired democratic rights andduties, the requirements of security for Europe as a whole, and the relations betweenits various institutions, of which the EU is one. It is a very tall order. But it cannotbe dreamt away in some mythical golden age, or any particular Utopian blueprintfor the future. Whatever detailed and messy form the compact eventually takes, itsnegotiators may be advised to take their cue from the founding fathers of Europe'slongest peace: the maintenance of the peace and the reconciliation of the peoplesmust remain in the forefront of political imagination and of political action. In short,absolutes have to be handbagged.

NOTES

1. Philip Zelikow and Condoleeza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Studyin Statecraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1995).

2. Archie Brown, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford: OUP 1996).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Wes

tern

Ken

tuck

y U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

20 0

4 N

ovem

ber

2014

830 WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS

3. Other correspondent accounts include:the highly readable book co-authored by the lateNicholas Colchester and David Buchan, Europe Relaunched, Truths and Illusions on theWay to 1992 (London: The Economist Books 1990); The Economist's Brusselscorrespondent, Charles Grant, Delors: Inside the House that Jacques Built (London:Brealey 1994); Axel Krause, corporate editor of the International Herald Tribune, Insidethe New Europe (NY: HarperCollins 1991); and Jean de la Guérivière, Voyage à l'Intérieurde l'Eurocratie (Paris: Le Monde Editions 1993), which applies the author's experienceas a long-time Le Monde correspondent reporting on African, Indian and Algerianpolitics to 'Brussels'.

4. Maurice Couve de Murville, Une Politique Etrangère: 1958-1969 (Paris: Pion 1971)pp.101, 248, 288, 390.

5. A recent, well written, pan-European book, pregnant with European nationhood, isLouise B. van Tartwijk-Novey, The European House of Cards (NY: St Martin's Press1995). A utilitarian calculus of mutual benefits from union is seen as providing a steppingstone towards a regrettably still-absent sense of brotherhood.

6. For a series of public policy cases on EU competition, industrial policy or privatisation,see Olivier Cadot et al. (eds) European Casebook on Industrial and Trade Policy (HemelHempstead: Prentice Hall 1996).

7. Stephan Liebfried and Paul Pierson (eds) European Social Policy: Between Fragmentationand Integration (Washington DC: Brookings 1995).

8. See, for instance, the various chapters in Achille Hannecourt (ed) Economic and SocialCohesion in Europe: A new objective for integration (London: Routledge 1992).

9. Conor Cruise O'Brien, The Great Melody (London: Minerva 1993).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Wes

tern

Ken

tuck

y U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

20 0

4 N

ovem

ber

2014