The Choice for Europe

by Andrew Moravcsik

Book Overview

The creation of the European Community ranks among the most extraordinary achievements in modern world politics. Observers disagree, however, about the reasons why European governments have chosen to coordinate core economic policies and surrender sovereign prerogatives. In this eagerly awaited book, Andrew Moravcsik analyzes the history of the region's movement toward economic and political union.Do these unifying steps demonstrate the preeminence...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801485096
• ISBN13: 9780801485091
• Release Date: October 1998
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Length: 528 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.2" x 9.2"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Absorbing study of the EU's development

In this deeply researched book, Andrew Moravcsik studies five key moves toward wider and deeper European integration: the Treaties of Rome, consolidating the Common Market, monetary integration, the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty. He argues that the member governments chose ever closer union in order to promote their countries' economic interests. He aims to prove that economic interests, not political ideas, drive EU integration. He focuses on how the governments of Germany, France and Britain made their decisions. Moravcsik argues that the British government's policy in the 1950s of opposition to joining the Common Market "was the rational one for a government that traded little with the Continent, had high tariffs in place, and feared competition with German producers." So there was economic logic to staying out. It is less clear that there was good reason for the subsequent reversal of policy: trading with a bloc does not oblige us to join it! He shows that De Gaulle vetoed Britain's application not out of chauvinism, but because we opposed generous financing for French farmers through the Common Agricultural Policy. In 1969, Pompidou lifted the veto, but only in exchange for the British government's huge concession of agreeing to a permanent financing arrangement for the CAP. This made it CAP reform impossible. Similarly, member governments have pursued integration through creating the Single Market and EMU. Moravcsik shows how Europe's multinational companies and the national employers' organisations backed integration. The European Commission admitted, "The single market programme has done more for business than it has for workers", a judgment true also of Economic and Monetary Union. Economic interests may well have determined the drive to a single state, but paradoxically the closer the cooperation between EU members has become, the worse their economies have performed. Capitalist states and multinational companies have taken the EU road to lost sovereignty and economic integration, but the peoples of Europe are increasingly choosing otherwise, as the Irish people showed in the 7 June referendum on the Nice Treaty. In particular, here in Britain the option of leaving the EU looks more and more inviting.

Renewing the Debate about the Causes of European Integration

Andrew Moravcsik boldly makes the case for the centrality of the three largest member states in the construction of Europe. In this volume, Moravcsik articulates his "liberal intergovernmentalist" (LI) framework of analysis and utilizes primary sources to strengthen his response to Paul Pierson's "historical institutionalist" (HI) account of European integration. As Moravcsik explains, in making the choice for Europe "...it was the deliberate triumphs of European integration, not its unintended side-effects, that appear to have increased support for further integration. This is the key point of divergence between HI theory and the tri-partite "liberal intergovernmentalist" interpretation advanced here. For most governments, inducing economic modernization-even with unpleasant side-effects-was the major purpose of European integration." (p. 491) One of the strongest contributions of Moravcsik's volume is to revisit the classic neo-functionalist-intergovernmentalist debate and to place it in a new theoretical context. To Moravcsik's credit, this tome offers a detailed, thorough and remarkably organized assessment of competing explanations in the European integration literature. Students and scholars of integration will grapple with the issues raised as a result of this work for years to come. Moravcsik's volume challenges the "myths" of European integration and calls into question the relevance of actions taken by supranational entrepreneurs. National versus supranational debates notwithstanding, Monnet's (and later Delor's) talent was to seize a moment in history when Europe was at the brink of continuity or change. Monnet's use of crisis as opportunity sought to alter fundamentally the way in which France and Germany interacted within the European system. Is this not the essence of the Schuman Plan in 1950, namely, to use the opportunity to modernize France economically as part of an equation to make future wars with its neighbor across the Rhine impossible? Although convergence was already apparent among European economies, did the initial political decision to pool the critical resources in the making of war, to integrate in the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), require individuals like Schuman, Monnet, Adenauer and Hallstein to work against the fact that European states mistrusted each other and were therefore disinclined to integrate? It is most unfortunate that volume length does not permit Moravcsik to cover this initial case. In the light of the ECSC experience, was the agreement to create the Common Market in 1958 intrinsically about making European countries richer? The archival research of Raymond Poidevin and Andreas Wilkens sheds light on the experience of the ECSC. Their writings may help us evaluate the extent to which the initial experiments in integration, including the aborted European Political Community (EPC) and European Defense Community (EDC), influenced the int

excellent revisionist overview of European integration

I found this book one of the best I have read on European integration history. It is a good example of revisionist history at its best. Compared to other books i have studied on the same subject this one makes a number of novel points and gives a completely different emphasis on driving factors & driving actors of the process of EU integration, putting the role of the Member States at centre stage all the way, and their economic interests as primary driving elements. To me, as an economist, this sounded convincing and certainly puts a novel slant on the traditional 'high politics' integration story. At the same time, I also found it a somewhat depressing account of the ineffectiveness of the Commission at crucial times of decision making. The book certainly puts into question some cherished notions about the role and functioning of the Commission, and since I am proud to work there it was not easy to take this in.I found the first chapter hard going and somewhat obtruse, although i can appreciate the methodological points he makes, which are all to often ingnored. Once one is through that, though, the real story begins and a fascinating account it is, especially since it certainly does not follow the analysis i have read previously on this subject. An excellent reference work, and certain to stimulate many a (heated) debate.

Political science for European integration historians

For once, here is a general text purporting to analyse the history of European integration that actually lives up to its billing. It is quite rightly considered a tour de force. Indeed, Andrew Moravcsik's "The choice for Europe" has already established itself as one of the most important publications to date on this subject. While it is obvious that the continued evolution of the European Union has been one of the most `extraordinary political achievements' to have taken place during the 20th century, the reasons why this community of states was created in the first place and the ways in which it has since developed have not always been so convincingly explained or succinctly outlined, that is until now. What Robert Keohane describes on the fly-cover as the `most compelling and significant analysis yet of the European Community' is just that. Moravcsik is not a historian, but in this text he tries to integrate political science theory into a historical study of European unity; this is in order to discover why there has been such a high-level of cooperation between Western European states during the last half-century. His book fills an important gap in our knowledge by tracing the somewhat erratic developments that have led to a greater degree of economic and political union gradually being instituted throughout this region and by placing these in a theoretical perspective.In this most accessible work, he persuasively argues that economic interdependence has been the prime motivator in successive governments making these rational choices. One of the weak (and strong) points however regarding Moravcsik's investigation is that it only focuses on the big European powers - Germany, Great Britain and France, as well as the European Commission - and does not really delve into small-power politics. Questions such as how these smaller nations tried to operate within, or negotiate entry into, the EEC as they became more aware and realistic about their world positions, how they operated in relation to the big powers, et cetera, must wait until their specific histories have been chronicled before they can be answered. At least historians now have a tool to do so.In taking the case studies that he does, Moravcsik examines them in the context of what he sees as the five decisive agreements that have driven European integration all the way from Messina to Maastricht: via the Treaties of Rome in 1957, the EC Merger Treaty and other consolidatory and expansionary agreements enacted during the 1960s, the various examples of European monetary integration during the 1970s and early 1980s, and the Single European Act of 1986, all the way to Economic and Monetary Union in 1991. In so doing, he develops his thesis on integration history to fit the facts rather than the other way round, while providing a critique of existing theories and presenting us with one of the best existing analyses on this topic. This volume by Moravcsik is