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Book reviews – Comptes rendus – Buchbesprechungen 141
only for the pronounced international profile developed by the Italian trade union since its
origins, but also because it casts light on a series of initiatives which clearly demonstrate
how since the 1970's Italy has tried to find a space among its European partners, in particular
France and Germany, by promoting the development of a social policy. In this context the
role played by the CISL in close cooperation with the Italian government appears particularly
significant.
Maria Eleonora Guasconi
University of Urbino
Dimitris N. CHRYSSOCHOOU – Theorizing European Integration, Sage, London,
2001, 240 p. – ISBN 0-7619-6286-7 – paperback: 16.99 £.
In his book Theorizing European Integration, Dimitris Chryssochoou aims at nothing less than a
reformulation of what European integration research should be aiming at: In place of the dominance
of the “microcosm of sector-specific analyses” (p.2), future scholarship on the European
Union should be more open and geared towards a re-thinking of the epistemology of EU studies
by asking “what constitutes legitimate questions and answers for integration scholarship” (p.2)?
Chryssochoou’s major contention is that existing theories of integration are too narrowly
focused and conceptually confined to “grasp the distinctive nature of the European polity
and its complex … governance structures” (p.1). He claims that this insufficiency in extant
European integration theorizing is mainly the result of the “raw positivism of self-styled
‘social scientists’ confining the art of theorizing to a narrow set of verifiable or falsifiable
hypotheses” (p.6). Yet, what should integration theory do or seek to achieve instead?
Chryssochoou has an answer ready at hand. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the
emerging Euro-polity, its constitutive ‘civic spheres’ and ‘political spaces’, researchers have
to free themselves from the cages of “‘strict’ science” advocated by ‘KKV’-type scholars
(p.8). 1 Although much of Chryssochoou’s book is about existing theories of integration
which he presents at length – half of the volume is dedicated to a review of theories from the
functionalism and federalism of the Community’s ‘formative’ years to the present new-institutionalism
debate – he is critical and sceptical about the contributions these theories are
capable of making in order to meet two key challenges of the evolving European polity, the
‘democratic deficit’ and the lack of a transnational civic sphere. In the final chapters of the
book he proposes to remedy this situation.
First, Chryssochoou advances an alternative characterization of the EU polity, based on
Lijphart’s theory of consociationalism, illuminating key features of European governance
which other characterizations, such as the federal or confederal state analogy, do not grasp.
According to him, the EU can best be depicted as a ‘confederal consociation’ possessing
key elements of a consociational polity: a power-sharing ‘governing’ coalition of member
states, some form of proportional representation in the decision-making institutions, a (qualified)
right of mutual veto, and segmental autonomy of the constituent (national) parts. He
justifies the attribute of a ‘confederal’ polity through the existence of “equally sovereign
demoi, each with its own distinctive national identity, political tradition, social structure and
civic culture” (p.141). Especially in the more recent treaty amending bargains, the confederal
nature of the polity poses an increasing challenge to EU governance. Given the increasing
asymmetry between and politicization of an elite-controlled process of further policy
integration and a concomitant compromising of the principles of “ruler accountability and
1. G. King, R. O. Keohane and S. Verba, Designing Social Inquiry. Scientific Inference in Qualitative
Research, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1994.