Journal of European Integration History – Revue d'histoire de l'

128Book reviews – Comptes rendus – BuchbesprechungenOutre les apports neufs ou approfondis sur telle ou telle question l’ouvrage confirme lerôle joué partout chez les Six et en Grande-Bretagne par trois séries de facteurs. Il est clairque les décideurs ont été fortement influencés par l’état des relations bilatérales: relationsfranco-allemandes, franco-anglaises, Benelux-France, Benelux-Italie-Royaume-Uni .... Ilssont aussi extrêmement sensibles aux considérations de politique intérieure qu’elles soientpurement politiques ou confondues avec l’intérêt national stratégique, économique .... Lesdécideurs n’échappent pas au «bureaucratic system». La haute administration peut parfoisimposer ses vues mais il convient de rappeler que bon nombre d’acteurs principaux: Adenauer,Spaak, Luns, Sforza, McMillan, de Gaulle ont su prendre des décisions allant contreles mesures préconisées par les hauts fonctionnaires. Il convient dans ce domaine commedans bien d’autres de ne pas généraliser.La lecture des articles de cet ouvrage – entièrement en anglais – est à recommander. Lestrès nombreuses notes qui accompagnent chacun d’entre eux témoignent du grand sérieuxde cette approche.Raymond PoidevinUniversité Robert Schuman, StrasbourgDavid ARTER. – The Politics of European Integration in the Twentieth Century. Aldershot,Dartmouth, 1993, 309 p. ISBN 1-85521-216-1 (hardback), ISBN 1-85521-255-2(paperback) – 15,00£.Europe has been transformed at breathtaking speed since the fall of the iron curtain in 1989and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. In Western Europe the Maastricht processtried to address the issues arising out of German unification, and the IntergovernmentalConference of 1996-7 is supposed to adapt the institutional and policy structure of the EuropeanUnion in advance of a first round of enlargement to the east. In Central and EasternEurope the new democracies have had to grapple with the numerous economic and socialtransition problems connected with the establishment of market economies and the restructuringof their trade patterns. Some of these countries did cope better than others with therelated challenge of developing stable parliamentary democracies, another precondition fortheir eventual accession to the European Union (EU).The sudden end to the short twentieth century served as a welcome reminder to Europeanhistorians of the postwar period that Europe was, is and will always be extending beyond thecore Europe of the six founding member states of the European Economic Community, or ofthe Europe of the nine, or of the twelve, or indeed of the fifteen member states the EU comprisessince the last round of enlargement in 1995. Thus, in the aftermath of the fall of theiron curtain, European historians have increasingly felt the need to write contemporaryEuropean history from an all-European perspective which is not restricted to West Europeanintegration after 1945, or even to the wider OECD Western Europe. Instead, such a perspectivewould also take account of the development of those countries in Central and EasternEurope which after 1945 were unfortunate enough to belong to the Soviet bloc, and of thecentralised attempts, directed from Moscow, to integrate the state economies of those countries.David Arter tries to address this need for an all-European perspective on postwar Europeanhistory, and he even attempts to draw historical comparisons between disintegrationand attempts at integration in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989 and the economic andpolitical development of Europe after the end of the First World War. While this attempt islaudable, his book shows that it is perhaps still a little early for such a comparison. First