Democracy in Europe

Rating:
Summary: Hmmmm
Review: Engaging but, as another another reader points out, Siedentorp is no de Tocqueville.

The ultimate conclusion is flawed although paradoxically this may be more apparent to British readers.

Europe is not the USA, it doesn't have the founding vision, it doesn't have the founding impetus and moreover it isn't starting from scratch with a relatively homogenous culture. In the EU, there is no sight of a single people or "demos" or anything remotely approaching one.

France, Germany and Belgium (or "Old Europe" in the famous words of Donald Rumsfeld) may be different (although even that is questionable).....but these countries are not synonymous with the EU.

Siedentrop is however to be congratulated for not being a "blinded europhile". He has approached his subject with some vigour and the fact he suggests that any other nation on earth might be a model for the EU is contrary to true "believers" who have stopped suggesting such models. This is because (a) it tends to suggest that they are trying to build a superstate which they consistently deny and (b)they are usually shot down on various points of detail by Euro-sceptics.

Rating:
Summary: Hmmmm
Review: I bought this book because I believed it would be an American's recommendations to a rising European Union.

Instead, it is a British book written by an American who has become more or less British who tries to show the British that they have something to offer Europe if they came to believe more in the British way themselves.

There are some interesting thoughts in Siedentop's book, but on the whole, I thought it was rather boring and irrelevant to me as a Dane.

Rating:
Summary: A Work of Intelligent Skepticism
Review: This is a most impressive book. Drawing lessons from the American experience of creating a continental, federal union and inspired by 19th Century French liberals such as Tocqueville and Guizot, Siedentop takes a skepticial (but sympathetic) look at the current project to create a "United States of Europe". The book is grand (even majestic) in its scope and (deliberately) provocative in its claims. The author is a political theorist and intellectual historian, which is the key to its appeal. There are countless books on the EU out there, written by political scientists and economist, full of arcane details and figures. This book, by contrast, is written from a larger perspective, drawing on the author's apparently vast knowledge of European social, cultural and intellectual life. The style is engaging and straightforward. The book will appeal most to journalists and very senior bureaucrats, I think. (Judging by the endorsements on the cover, this is indeed the case.) It will probably be judged too sweeping and general by most academic specialists and too intellectual and abstract by most ordinary readers. It is a work of popular scholarship or "high journalism", in the highest and best sense of that term. There is still an appreciation for such things among British journalists (although it is diminishing), unlike their American cousins, for whom this book will probably seem far too substantial to engage their attention for long. The principal villains of the piece are the French elites, who (the author alleges) have so far successfully imposed an elitist, centralist, statist vision on the construction of the European Union. The Germans have been too politically weak and self-absorbed to resist this aggressive French agenda, and the British are trapped in their own social and constitutional ancien regime, unable to offer any practical alternatives to their traditional rivals. So Siedentop turns to American federalism for an alternative conception of how the New Europe should develop. He is a Tocquevillian liberal who favors decentralization spiced with Rousseauian democratic republicanism. One of his principal complaints about the debate on Europe is that economics has completely eclipsed the political, resulting in a union that is politically retarded and dangerous (one of his favorite words). At the very least, his assessment of the many dangers on the road to union in Europe deserves very serious consideration. Hopefully, it will help to raise the standard of debate on its future course.

Overall, a highly stimulating, engaging, insightful book that no one who is even remotely interested in the future of Europe can afford to overlook.

Rating:
Summary: Insightful Primer
Review: This is a very engaging and readable primer on federalism, its history and various forms. Siedentop advocates not so much a British solution to EU federalism, as a German one with a written constitution and clear seperation of powers between Union and member states, and judicial review. He also advocates creation of a European Senate indirectly elected by national legislators to preserve the Federal character of the union.