Integrating Europe. Informal Politics and Institutional Change. By Jeffrey Stacey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 270 pp., £14.75 hardcover (ISBN 978-0-19-958472-5).

Abstract

Integrating Europe. Informal Politics and Institutional Change. By Stacey Jeffrey . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 270 pp., £14.75 hardcover (ISBN 978-0-19-958472-5). Understanding the origins, development, and consequences of the decisions taken by the European Union (EU) remains one of the main challenges for policy makers and scholars. This complex task of deciphering the integration process lies not only in the increasing number of policies, but also in the variety of motivations that drive the action of the actors to either catalyze or undermine the activity of the European Union. Traditional approaches focusing on the integration process through the logic of power and preferences (Moravcsik 1998), institutions (Pollack 2003), or networks (Kassim 1994), among others, have made a significant contribution to the comprehension of the integration process. Nonetheless, some angles of the integration process are still understudied: this is the case of informal politics in the integration process. Jeffrey Stacey examines the phenomenon of institutional change by examining informal politics. This innovative angle of investigation unveils a dynamic of integration frequently dismissed by the majority of studies focused on the formal sphere of European integration. Focused on the regional level of analysis, where three main actors drive the integration process (Council, Commission, and Parliament), the informal sphere can be understood as “the activities of policy-making actors that are not subject to the ECJ oversight and occur on a level parallel to but separate from the EU's formal treaty base level” (19). Thus, the book …