European Integration, 1950-2003: Superstate or New Market Economy?

by John Gillingham

Overview

Integration is the most significant European historical development in the past fifty years, eclipsing in importance even the collapse of the USSR. This movement toward economic and political union has not only helped revive, transform and rejuvenate a battered civilization; it is opening the way to a promising future. Yet, until now, no satisfactory explanation is to be found in any single book as to why integration is significant, how it originated and has developed, how it has changed and continues to change Europe, and where it is headed. John Gillingham is a professor of history at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. His fields of research include European economic and cultural history as well as the history of international organizations. His book Coal, Steel and the Rebirth of Europe, 1945-1955(Cambridge, 1991) was awarded the prestigious George Lewis Beer Prize by the American Historical Association. In addition to two edited volumes and approximately fifty published articles, Gillingham is the author of Industry and Politics in the Third Reich (Columbia, 1985) and Belgian Business in the Nazi New Order (Ghent, 1977). Gillingham has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and elsewhere.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521012621
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/02/2003
Edition description:	First
Pages:	608
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 1.50(d)

Table of Contents

Part I. A German Solution to Europe's Problems? The Early History of European Communities, 1950–1965: Introduction to part one: a new global setting; 1. The liberal project for an integrated Europe; 2. The rise and decline of monetarism; 3. More or less liberal Europe: the institutional origins of integration; 4. All or nothing? The founding of the EEC and the ending of an era, 1958–1966; Conclusion of part one: Needed: a new integration scenario; Part II. From Embedded Liberalism to Liberalism - A Step Forward: European Integration and Regime Change in the 1970s: Introduction to part two: a new European situation; 5. Realm of theory to sphere of action; 6. Better than muddling through; Conclusion of part two: needed: a new integration theory; Part III. Seeking the New Horizon: European Integration from the Single European Act to the Maastricht Treaty: Introduction to part three: a new realm of possibility; 7. Forces of change, forces of resistance; 8. Thatcherism, and the reform of Britain; 9. The crisis of the welfare state and the challenge of modernization in Europe in the 1980s; 10. Maastricht ho! by air, land, or SEA?; 11. The Delorean agenda; Conclusion of part three: Needed: a new integration direction; Part IV: A False Dawn? Challenge and Promise in Europe of the 1990s: Introduction to part four: a new global framework; 12. Almost a road to nowhere; 13. No open and shut cases: member-states and the European community in the 1990s; 14. Shrinking enlargement: betrayal of a pledge or new opportunity?; 15. The new market economy and Europe's future; Conclusion to part four: Needed: a new European Union?

Editorial Reviews

"John Gillingham's fascinating history of European integration brings out the shifts of gears, changes of direction and divergent impulses that brought the European Union to its present established but contested shape as the triumph of market over state. Gillingham wanted his book to 'trumpet like an elephant,' and it does. To extend his metaphor, it gores any number of sacred cows, from the myths of the Founding Fathers and of American benevolence to the European social model. It will stimulate lively and constructive debate."
Robert O. Paxton, Columbia University

"John Gillingham is the preeminent American historian of the European Union. His book builds on vast scholarly knowledge to provide the first full-length history of European integration from the Second World War to the present day."
Charles S. Maier, Harvard University

"Professor John Gillingham's sweeping reinterpretation of European integration since 1950 is informed, provocative, and fresh. It combines a deep appreciation of the market incentives that have made European cooperation inevitable, a subtle account of the ideologies and diplomatic circumstances that shaped its precise form, and a sharp Hayekian critique of the policy choices that were made. It is sure to generate scholarly debate for years to come."
Andrew Moravcsik, Harvard University

"John Gillingham has produced an excellent, up-to-date history of the EU which overturns many preconceived ideas and challenges the views of Eurofanatics and Eurosceptics alike. It is a dazzling performance, full of paradoxes and ironies and some very funny lines. If anyone wants to know what little actually works in the EU and why, this is the book to read. It is acidly critical yet economically rational. It leaves the usual hagiographical histories of European bureaucracy way behind. Every student of post-war Europe will have to come to terms with it. It is an astounding achievement."
Alan Sked, Department of International History, London School of Economics, formerly Convener of European Studies

"The European Union is very difficult to write about, because it can be bewilderingly technical, and at the same time invites windy rhetoric. It takes immense familiarity with the subject - and particular knowledge of what are still very different countries - to write a book both accessible and worth reading. John Gillingham has succeeded. This is a book that will be of great use at any level - politicians wishing to make serious speeches, teachers needing to put together a course, or just travellers in an aircraft. I am in the author's debt."
Norman Stone, Director of the Turkish-Russian Institute, Bilkent University, Ankara, formerly of Oxford University

"Gillingham has written the first comprehensive history of European integration and produced a profoundly original reinterpretation of this enormously complex process."
John P. McKay, University of Illinois, Urbana

"...impressive and engaging... The reader closes this book-length discourse ... with the certitude of having gained knowledge and insight into the workings and rocky foundations of the European experiment."
Business History Review

"John Gillingham has written an entertaining and informative history of European integration...[His] book breaks many conventions of historical and academic writing. It is bold in its scope and in its trans disciplinary methodological approach taken to its topic...It is a lively read with lots of political history detail. I recommend it."
Jeffrey Sommers, Andre Gunder Frank, Journal of World History

From the Publisher

This monumental book is in many ways the opposite of Tsoukalis': twice as long, far less interested in security and diplomacy, and held together by a thesis. The least one can say is that it is original. Gillingham is a firm believer in economic liberalism, and he conceives of the history of European integration as a contest between the liberal vision and the interventionist one. It is therefore not surprising that he begins not with the French proposal for a coal and steel community in 1950 but with "the classic liberal solution to the German problem" after the Second World War. He regards Margaret Thatcher's actions and influence as a powerful push toward "the formation of the kind of large, minimally regulated, decentralized market-driven interstate federal union that might have met with the approval of Friedrick Hayek" and portrays Jacques Delors (a Christian Democrat turned Socialist) as the enemy of that dream. Gillingham believes that "a federal Europe can be created democratically, functionally, and through the market — or not at all." But would "a feeling of European nationhood" result from the institutional evolution of the community into "an efta-like mechanism" to "encourage the emergence of an enterprise society" and "erode pointless hierarchies"? Is it true that the EU has "accomplished little or nothing in the last ten years"? Or that "a political Europe" is needed only as a hedge against the contingency of a large-scale disaster that could threaten the values of European civilization? In any case, Gillingham's belief that these values can be saved only by the economics and politics of classical liberalism is more an ideological position than a well thought outprogram.

Foreign Affairs