Towards A New Europe: Stops and Starts in Regional Integration

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This volume explores the theoretical value of applying rational choice theory to questions of regional integration. As with other questions of conflict and co-operation in the field of international politics, studies of European integration are divided largely between the realist and liberalist perspectives. Yet, neither of these schools of thought aptly explains the dynamics characterising this process, that is, the major advances in regional integration and the long periods of paralysis. The contributions in the volume work their way from the most general questions and macro-processes down to particular policy problems of the European Union and the micro-foundations of interstate co-operation. This work should be of interest to scholars and policymakers in international relations, international economics and European studies.

Reviews

"Towards a New Europe unites outstanding rationalist contributions to the analysis of European regional integration. They are bound to give new impetus to the study of the politics of European integration. The focus on an explanation of the "stops and starts in regional integration" is highly topical at a time when the "europhoria" of the late 1980s and early 1990s is giving way to renewed skepticism, and when the European Union faces the double challenge of deepening and widening."-Professor Volker Rittberger University of Tubingen
The authors have done a superb job in illustrating the types of models that can be used to study the decision-making process associated with the issues of expansion of members as the European Union contemplates its future after the year 2000, ...-American Political Science Review
This book make significant contributions to the field of regional integration by effectively challenging commonly accepted beliefs. Towards a New Europe distinguishes itself from other works on European integration, primarily by its use of formal theory, which has not been used extensively in the study of intergration.-Perspectives on Political Science
"The authors have done a superb job in illustrating the types of models that can be used to study the decision-making process associated with the issues of expansion of members as the European Union contemplates its future after the year 2000, ..."-American Political Science Review
"This book make significant contributions to the field of regional integration by effectively challenging commonly accepted beliefs. Towards a New Europe distinguishes itself from other works on European integration, primarily by its use of formal theory, which has not been used extensively in the study of intergration."-Perspectives on Political Science

Author Bio

GERALD SCHNEIDER holds the Chair in International Relations on the Faculty of Public Administration at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Director and Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Bern in Switzerland. PATRICIA WEITSMAN is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ohio University. Her research and publications are in the areas of regional integration, international security, and American foreign policy making. THOMAS BERNAUER is Senior Lecturer and Research Associate at the Center for Political Science at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.