Institutionalizing the EU One Case at a Time

Abstract

The European Court and Civil Society: Litigation, Mobilization and Governance. By Rachel A. Cichowski. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 310 pp., $91.00 cloth (ISBN-13: 978-0-521-85585-3); $34.99 paper (ISBN-13: 978-0-521-67181-1). Scholars debate whether increasing levels of European integration should be attributed primarily to intergovernmental bargains and decision making driven by national governments (see, for example, Garrett 1992; Moravcsik 1998), or whether they are, instead, the product of functional demands for supranational governance (see, for example, Haas 1958, 1964). In The European Court and Civil Society: Litigation, Mobilization and Governance , Rachel Cichowski provides a theoretically and methodologically rich contribution to this literature. Employing a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, she demonstrates the integral role played by civil society as well as by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Europe's transformation from a supranational economic arrangement dominated by heads of governments into a quasi-constitutional polity in which interest groups and individual rights can exert considerable influence. In so doing, Cichowski presents a significant challenge to intergovernmental theories. Moreover, Cichowski's theoretical framework fills a lacuna in neofunctionalist theory, providing it with a means by which it can account for mid-level change. Thus, The European Court and Civil Society constitutes essential reading for students of European integration. However, with its focus on legal mobilization, it also makes an important contribution to the literature on law, courts, and society. Through the book's well organized chapters and clear prose, Cichowski successfully manages to pack an impressive amount of data and analysis into 263 pages of text. Cichowski posits that supranational governance develops through two processes: litigation and transnational mobilization. Essentially, EU rules …