European integration
Subtitle: a concise history
By: Mark Gilbert
Edition: 2nd ed., [rev. and updated ed.]
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Lanham, Md
Language: eng
Number of pages: 266
ISBN-13: 9780742566637; 9780742566644; 9780742566651
Subjects: Politics and government; Europe; European Union; Economic integration; History
Description: This is the standard for concise histories of the European Union. The author offers a clear and balanced narrative of European integration since its inception to the present, set in the wider history of the post-war period. Imperial decline and decolonization, the threat and then fall of communism, the impact of American policy, and the democratization of the Mediterranean and central European countries are just some of the contemporaneous historical developments whose intersecting stories have been woven into this book's fabric. The European Union remains a remarkable experiment in regional cooperation, but the aura of success that has enveloped the process of integration for much of the period since the 1950s is dissipating in the wake of dire economic collapses and heated immigration debates. Gilbert concludes by examining the mood of crisis that has taken hold in the EU since 2005 and considers the Union's future.
Notes: Rev. and updated ed. of: Surpassing realism : the politics of European integration since 1945. c2003.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Enemies to partners: the politics of cooperation in Western Europe 1945-1950; title: Ever closer union: from the Schuman Plan to the Economic Community 1950-1958; title: In the shadow of the general: De Gaulle and the EEC 1958-1969; title: Weathering the storm: the EC during the 1970s; title: The 1992 initiative and relaunch of the community; title: The Maastricht compromise; title: EUphoria; title: Toward a twin-track Europe.