Towards A New Europe

This volume explores the theoretical value of applying rational choice theory to questions of regional integration. As with other questions of conflict and cooperation 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 characterizing this process, that is, the major advances in regional integration and the long periods of paralysis. The contributions in this 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 cooperation.

The work will be of interest to scholars and policymakers in international relations, international economics, and European studies. Review: 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