West European Governments Research Articles

Unleashing or domesticating the vitality of citizens' initiatives? The paradoxical relationship between governments and citizens' initiatives in the energy transition

In their quest to create vital cities, West European city governments stimulate citizens to self-organize in citizens' initiatives. This trend it accompanied by conflicting scientific and governmental discourses: on the one hand, citizens' initiatives are praised for giving ‘power to the people’, on the other hand, citizens' initiatives are understood as mere ‘tools’ to roll-out government policies. By adopting a critical-constructive perspective, this study sets out to better understand the paradoxical attitudes of local governments toward the potential of CIs for stimulating urban vitality. We do so by uncovering patterns that explain the opening and closing of spaces for citizens to develop their initiatives. To this end, we conducted an in-depth case study into the relation between the local government and citizens initiatives in the energy transition in Rotterdam (the Netherlands). Our findings reveal that a configuration of different explanatory mechanisms leads to the ‘domestication’ of initiatives, which jeopardizes their unique transformative potential that can contribute to the vitality of cities.

Containing Technology and Allies Alike: The Cold War, Intra-NATO Relations, and the U.S. Centrifuge Classification Initiative, 1958–1962

Abstract This article discusses how West European governments reacted to U.S. efforts to control the emergence and spread of gaseous diffusion and ultracentrifuge technology for uranium enrichment. The article focuses on Dutch, British, and West German Cold War perspectives on nuclear technological cooperation with the United States. U.S. insistence on maintaining secrecy around the ultracentrifuge was driven not only by technological and nuclear nonproliferation concerns but also by overarching Cold War dynamics at the time of the 1961 Berlin crisis and NATO's nuclear modernization. The Dutch–West German exploration of bilateral nuclear cooperation on gas centrifuges and the subsequent U.S. classification efforts also reveal a story of transatlantic competition over technological ambitions, commercial interests, and Western Europe's strategic potential. The article thus highlights the intersection of the history of science and technology and Cold War diplomatic and nuclear history, combining fresh material from Dutch archives with U.S. and British primary sources.

Pandemic narratives and policy responses: west European governments and COVID-19

ABSTRACT Governments across western Europe have adopted significantly different policy responses to the existential challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. We propose that a key to understanding the differences in policy responses may lie in narratives. Focusing on fifteen countries in western Europe, as well as two contrasting case studies on Sweden and Greece, we investigate the relationship between the narratives that governments developed on the threats generated by COVID-19, and the (early) stringency of their respective policy responses that followed. Our analysis suggests that there is an inverse relationship between the emphasis on the economic cost of the pandemic and on framing the disease as affecting ‘only’ certain sub-groups severely in government narratives, and the tendency to introduce early and stringent restrictions.

Romani Refugees and the Postwar Order

Scholarship on Romani (Gypsy) migration has typically focused either on longue durée patterns of persecution and marginalization or on Roma migrants within Europe since the fall of communism. This article shows how the westward migration of Roma after the Second World War and during the early years of the Cold War breaks with several common assumptions about the history of displaced persons, refugees, and Roma alike. Contrary to claims about unbroken continuities in the persecution of European Roma, in the immediate postwar years officers of the International Refugee Organization used ‘Gypsy' as a privileged category that improved an applicant’s changes of getting support from the organization. Internationalization thus offered a brief respite from discrimination for one of the only ethnic refugee groups without its own lobby. This situation changed by the 1950s, when national refugee administrations replaced the earlier international refugee regimes established in the wake of the war. Roma became an exception at a time when West European governments were accepting asylum-seekers from Eastern Europe as part of their ongoing Cold War propaganda efforts. In this period government officials concerned with protecting national interests reverted to earlier classifications of ‘Gypsies' as nomads who were, by definition, not refugees.

Local, National and Global Islam: Religious Guidance and European Muslim Public Opinion on Political Radicalism and Social Conservatism

The attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and Kosher supermarket in Paris in January 2015, as well as the announcement of a ‘Caliphate’ by radical Islamists of the so-called ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’ (ISIS) in 2014, reignited political and academic interest in the possible appeal of radical Islamism among young Muslims living in Western Europe. This analysis expands existing knowledge by adding a large-n, cross-national comparison to the small-n or single-case-study approaches dominating research on European Muslims over the last two decades. Moving beyond examination of the interaction between European governments and groups claiming to represent European Muslims, this analysis takes into account the individualisation of Muslim religious discourses, practices and identities. Binary logistic regression analyses challenge conventional wisdom which emphasises discrimination and rejection of Western foreign policies in the explanation of political radicalism. Instead, religious guidance and socio-economic status emerge as consistent correlates of political and social attitudes among West European Muslims. These findings not only add to a growing body of literature providing empirical evidence for the political impact of religious elites, they also have crucial policy implications for West European governments working to maintain national security and social cohesion.

Domesticity, Rearmament, and the Limits of U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Netherlands during the Early Cold War

By the early 1950s, Western rearmament had emerged as a central U.S. foreign policy goal. However, many West European governments were reluctant to bear the costs of rearmament at a time when economic reconstruction and social welfare were still urgently needed. Perhaps nowhere was this resistance as entrenched as in the Netherlands, where concern over defense expenditure was most pronounced among Dutch housewives, a traditionally prominent part of Dutch society. For U.S. diplomats in The Hague, the Dutch housewife therefore became the greatest obstacle they needed to overcome in generating Dutch support for rearmament. When U.S. officials encouraged Dutch women to take a more prominent stand on international affairs, these efforts posed a challenge to local cultural conventions. Yet with few usable cultural tropes on which to draw amid continued economic austerity, the U.S. effort to reach Dutch women fell short. An analysis of this failed effort underscores the limits of U.S. cultural influence in other Western societies during the early Cold War.

The Neoliberalized State and Migration Control: The Rise of Private Actors in the Enforcement and Design of Migration Policy

Current migration debates often underestimate the structural transformation of the European state and its embrace of neoliberal competition state priorities. This article analyzes two important changes that flow form this mutation. Firstly, migration control efforts now involve private actors, especially transportation companies, but also private security companies. By devolving operational responsibility and imposing financial sanctions, airlines are forced to co-manage flows of “undesirable” migrants, such as refugees and asylum seekers. Secondly, employer associations are gaining increasing influence over economic migration design. The rhetorical link between competitiveness and liberalized economic migration policy successfully sways policy-makers. Employers provide the data and arguments that West European governments base their economic migration policy design on. They are represented in influential advisory councils and help co-manage migration flows considered of economic utility.

Constitutional Power and Competing Risks: Monarchs, Presidents, Prime Ministers, and the Termination of East and West European Cabinets

Some European constitutions give cabinets great discretion to manage their own demise, whereas others limit their choices and insert the head of state into decisions about government termination. In this article, we map the tremendous variation in the constitutional rules that govern cabinet termination and test existing expectations about its effects on a government's survival and mode of termination. In doing so, we use the most extensive government survival data set available to date, the first to include East and West European governments. Our results demonstrate that constitutional constraints on governments and presidential influence on cabinet termination are much more common than has previously been understood and have powerful effects on the hazard profiles of governments. These results alter and improve the discipline's understanding of government termination and durability, and have implications for comparative work in a range of areas, including the survival and performance of democracies, electoral accountability, opportunistic election calling, and political business cycles.

Russia's Chechen War by Tracey C. German (review)

352 SEER, 83, 2, 2005 In the final part of the book, the author criticizes American and West European governments for muting their response to Russian war crimes in Chechnya, especially in the wake of 9/ I I. He urges greater scepticism with regard to the assumption that Moscow is pursuing, albeit rather clumsily, worthy goals in Chechnya -warding off the chaotic disintegrationof Russia and fightingIslamistterrorism. Providence, RI STEPHEN D. SHENFIELD German, Tracey C. Russia'sChechen War.RoutledgeCurzon, London and New York, 2004. x + 246 pp. Maps. Glossary. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. [65.00. CONVENTIONAL military analysis of events in Chechnya over the last decade has tended to separatethe operationsthereinto a Firstand a Second Chechen War. This is profoundly misleading. Dr Tracey C. German's book proves emphaticallythat both phases of militaryaction to date are but a subordinate part of a continuum that is primarilypolitical and economic in motivation, which in fact predates the Russian state as currently constituted, and has continued rightup to the present day. Indeed, the contemporaryrelevance of the book should be one of its major selling points. This may not be immediately obvious from the contents page, where dates in the early I990S predominate. However, those who wish to understand the motivating forces behind the current logjam of violence, corruptionand crackdownin the Russian North Caucasusmust startwith an analysis of its foundations and later evolution. Here, Dr German does the Englishlanguage readera sterlingservicein severalrespects. First, her chronological approach is thorough, clear and comprehensible. In this subject area, where events and policy decisions provide much of the momentum, it is fundamental to an understandingof the driving forces and issues at stake. In her detailed exposition of the public discourse, she choreographs the actors and their lines so that the factors take centre stage, and it will surprisesome readersto discoverjust which factorsprove the most influential.Today's terroristthreatis shown to be firmlyrooted notjust in an ethnic group's desire for self-determination,but in deals, dissent and power struggleswithin the Chechen ranksdatingback at least to the mid I98os. Secondly, her use of primary source material is exemplary. Most of her myriadshortquotationscome fromthe Russianmedia, and in particularfrom ephemeral contemporaryaccountswhich are destined to become inaccessible save to the persistenthistoricalresearcher.Yetthey provide a compelling case forseeing events in Chechnya as the mostviolent aspectof a 'fledglingRussian democracy [which] illustrates the highly personalized nature of decisionmakingin the post-communistera' (p. i). Thirdly, whilst setting the military (and other uniformed services')actions firmly within their political context and the military action occupies a relatively small part both of this book and of the period it covers the narrative is almost entirely free of political theory and of judgmentalism. Where contemporary analyses are fundamentallyincompatible, the reader is REVIEWS 353 left to judge for himself. Yet where an author's comment or explanation is appropriate,it is never lacking. There are a few very minor errors:PresidentMaskhadovhad undoubtedly been a lieutenant (p. I 22), but it was as a full colonel that he left the Soviet army in I992 after twenty years' service. One might have wished for more detail on the Chechen-Ingush relationship in the period between i99i and 1994, given the pivotal nature of the elections in the Chechen part of Checheno-Ingushetia in i99i which Dr German describes on pp. 46ff However, this lack of detail reflects the situation at the time, which was confused and largelyundiscussed,at least in public. Such are the problems of writingeven recent history. Future researcherswill be gratefulfor the impressivebibliographyand the full and usefulendnotes. By comparison,the index and the treatmentof events after I999 are less comprehensive. Yet this is more than compensated for by the treatmentof the Gorbachevperiodwhich, though seminal,isoftenignored in discussions of current problems in post-Soviet space. This book will go a long way towardsredressingthe balance forlaterhistorians. Yetthisbook should not be left to historiansor to regional experts.Itsmain value arguablylies in its readable but reliable chronicling, and its restrained but authoritative analysis of processes a decade ago which have a profound impact today, and notjust on Russiaand Chechnya. In herveryfirstsentence, Dr German draws attention to events that posed 'an increasing threat not only to the stability of the North Caucasus region, but also to...

NATO's Anglosphere Option: Closing the Distance between Mars and Venus

INTRODUCTIONThe period since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 should have been a golden age in transatlantic security relations. More importantly, it could have been. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, there was virtual unanimity among the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that al Qaeda represented a direct threat to the common values and interests of NATO members. Within days, and for the first time in its 52-year history, the alliance had invoked article 5 of the NATO treaty (the all for one collective defence clause) in order to assure the US that it could count on the unanimous support of allied governments. For its part, Washington issued a series of statements which indicated that the US understood that the global war on terror (GWOT) could only succeed if it was managed as a broad-based campaign of multilateral security cooperation. Two-and-a-half years later, this post-9/11 world seems as remote as a fairy tale. Bilateral relations between Washington and key European allies are on life support. NATO has more members and more missions than it did before September 11, but there is a pervasive sense of confusion about the alliance's fundamental purpose, and a deep sense of pessimism about its future.This essay will look for some of the causes of NATO's current crises. I will not apportion blame equally, because the Bush administration is primarily responsible for the problems that currently plague the alliance. I will place a special emphasis on the arguments of President Bush's neoconservative advisers, who have exercised such an enormous influence over US foreign policy since the attacks of 11 September 2001. Richard Perle's and David Frum's study, entitled An End to Evil, will be accorded particular attention, since it can be read as the neoconservative equivalent of Luther's 95 theses (the religious analogy is not coincidental).' In the end, of course, George W. Bush must take responsibility for his administration's policies, regardless of the influence exercised by the members of the neocon community.My critique of the Bush administration will be followed by an analysis of certain arguments that have gained credence among many European intellectuals and policymakers. In this regard, I will place a special emphasis on the writings and speeches of French philosopher Etienne Balibar, an emeritus professor at the University of Paris X-Nanterres and a distinguished professor of humanities at the University of California, Irvine. Balibar is an articulate and influential representative of a community of postmodern, anti-statist and quasi-pacifist intellectuals who are generally suspicious of both NATO and the United States. He has published several influential essays on European democratization, the evolving nature of sovereignty, and the concept of European citizenship (particularly in contradistinction to the status of sans-papiers within the borders of western Europe). Balibar has also written on the EU's relations with, and obligations toward, its neighbours to the east and south, and about Europe's distinct role as a civilizing influence in the world.2 This study will focus on these more wide-ranging statements by Balibar about Europe's proper place in the world.The Martian excesses of the neoconservatives and the Venutian fantasies of European and Canadian commentators such as Balibar constitute the extremes of an evolving debate about NATO's proper role in the world.3 Following my critique of these two worldviews, I will make a case for a new transatlantic dialogue, based upon a cluster of values which are associated with the concept of Anglosphere. Prior to developing these arguments, however, it is necessary to provide some basic information on the changes that have taken place in NATO over the last 55 years, with special reference to the question of the alliance's boundaries.NATO's TRANSFORMATIONDuring 1948, US defence planners debated whether America should break with its long tradition of opposition to membership in entangling peacetime alliances and commit to a new multilateral security treaty with Canada and selected west European governments. …

Against Segregation: Ethnic Mixing in Liberal States

T HAS become commonplace among political theorists to observe that almost all liberal, Western societies have turned multicultural one way or another. We know about the plight of aboriginal people in Australia and Canada, we have learned a great deal about French speaking Canadians residing in Quebec, and we have been taught about West European governments and their ethnic minorities: inhabitants of former colonies (Pakistanis in Britain, Algerians in France, Indonesians in the Netherlands), former guest workers and their descendants from Turkey and the Maghreb, and asylum seekers from all over the world. Debates among political theorists have focused on questions such as: should cultural minorities be given special rights, and if so, what kind of rights? Must they be collective rights or individual rights? Should these rights be granted to ancient national minorities only, or should they also be given to recent immigrants? If cultural minorities are given special rights, how should these rights be weighed against the rights and interests of individual members of minority groups, in particular women and children? Is the rights vocabulary adequate for the wishes and interests of minority groups? Is it not more appropriate to talk about a need for recognition or respect? 1 In this article I want to address a slightly different, albeit related issue. I want to find out whether it could be morally acceptable or even desirable to consciously aim for ethnically diverse neighbourhoods and primary schools. Should national or local governments have the right to disperse the members of minority groups on their territory so as to facilitate their integration in the mainstream culture? Or, alternatively, should they have the right to move non-immigrant, white middleclass families in order to reach the same objective? 2

European Defence and Nato

THE ASPIRATION AMONG WEST EUROPEAN governments to co-operate not just on economic and trade policies but also on security and defence goes back to the years immediately after World War II.(f.1) The Brussels Treaty Organization (1948) and the subsequent Western European Union (1954) were essentially defensive alliances, while the European Defence Community (established in 1952 and abandoned in 1954) included the notion of a common defence policy and a pooled military capacity governed by a European defence and foreign policy council. Although none of these initiatives provided Europe with the concrete military protection it needed to navigate through the cold war, they are evidence of the fact that European governments have consistently sought channels of co-operation among themselves in addition to participating in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).European Political Co-operation allowed European Community members to formulate common foreign policy objectives in the 1970s and 1980s. Its successor when the cold war ended, the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the European Union (EU), added to the policy pronouncements a capacity for modest joint actions. The Balkan wars of the early 1990s underscored for many Europeans the need to develop both political and military capacity in the only European military organization they had - the Western European Union (WEU) - to manage crises that did not really threaten the territorial security of any member of NATO.(f.2) Of course, the same crises also reinvigorated the Atlantic Alliance, ultimately modernizing its command structure and broadening its mission. As a result, the EU and NATO have begun to look like competitors in the crisis management area on the EU's borders.By mid-1996, NATO and the EU appeared to agree on a formula that would allow European initiatives within NATO. The EU would even be able to borrow expensive NATO assets, such as command and control, to undertake European-led, low intensity crisis management operations - the Petersberg tasks - through the WEU.(f.3) In 1997, at its summit in Amsterdam, the EU took over from the WEU both the responsibility for and the management of the Petersberg tasks.This model of constructive co-operation between the aspirations of the European Union and the military capacity of the Atlantic Alliance came to be known as the European Security and Defence Identity or ESDI-in-NATO. There was agreement in principle that NATO and the WEU would prepare for Combined Joint Task Force operations. Yet, the details of this arrangement were never satisfactorily worked out because the aspiration for European independence proved just as strong as the determination of NATO (and especially the Americans) to maintain control over the Alliance's mandate, operations, and assets.(f.4)In an historical meeting at St Malo in December 1998, the French and British governments agreed that the EU should create a 'capacity for autonomous action backed up by credible military forces.'(f.5) Building on this bilateral accord and fuelled by the Kosovo crisis, in December 1999 the EU announced a common European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), which includes the so-called Headline Goal, that is, the capacity to maintain a rapid reaction force of 60,000 troops with all the military requirements to launch sustainable crisis operations in the European area by 2003.(f.6)The surprising pace with which the EU developed new decision-making structures for ESDP and its apparent progress in assembling military forces for the rapid reaction force, all amidst the controversy over NATO's role in the air war against Serbia, has led to many defensive and 'turf-protecting' debates on both sides of the north Atlantic. The debate is about who decides - NATO or the European Union - when or where to intervene. Moreover, who will do the military planning and operational preparations for such potential interventions? Who can participate if the EU undertakes the action alone? …

From the Atlantic to the Bug, from the Arctic to the Tigris? The Transformation of the EU and NATO

Both the European Union and NATO are now committed in principle to substantial enlargement. It remains doubtful, however, how far member governments are making a success of further enlargement, let alone thinking through its strategic implications. Yet the process of dual enlargement will define the future security, political and economic structures of the European region. During the past year west European governments have extended promises of eventual membership to the western Balkan states and to Turkey; while the future positions of Ukraine, Russia, the Caucasus states and the southern Mediterranean associates all raise delicate policy issues. Hard choices remain to be made about the adaptation of these organizations to eastern enlargement, and about the management of relations with the near neighbours who will remain outside.

Mobilizing Europe's Stateless: America's Plan for a Cold War Army

When World War II ended, millions of refugees were left in Europe, unable or unwilling to return to their former homes. A number of leading U.S. officials wanted to form an armed Volunteer Freedom Corps out of these displaced groups. The corps would have supplemented—and perhaps eventually replaced—U.S. troops stationed in Europe. American officials favored the plan because they believed it would reduce the U.S. military burden, alleviate the refugee crisis, and provide a bulwark against Soviet expansion. The proposal was never implemented, however, because of objections from West European governments. The recurring episode illustrated the tensions within NATO during the Cold War.

Multi-track approach to public-sector restructuring in Europe: impact on employment relations; role of the trade unions

The article discusses a) restructuring trends in Europe's public sector (in an employment relations perspective), b) the response of the trade unions to this process, and c) the overall impact of these developments on employment relations in the sector. We present an analysis emphasising the differences in the regulatory systems applied to public-sector restructuring processes in the EU Member States, arguing that there are significant variations in the development dynamics in employment relations, and, further, that these dynamics can be traced to at least three different regulatory regimes. The first regime of the three posited regimes emerged from the unique pattern of development observed in the UK's public sector, featuring large-scale privatisation schemes, the introduction of elements of competition and new forms of management. The second type of regime is evident in the Nordic countries, in the Netherlands and - albeit in modified form - in Italy, characterised by a certain measure of restructuring of the public-sector labour market, and based largely on co-operation between public-sector employers and the trade unions. The third type of regime is represented by Germany and France, with their independent regulatory systems in which centralism and sets of rules are paramount, with very few changes in the general pattern of employment relations. While identifying the significant variations listed above, we also argue that a common trend is evident in the EU Member States: a trend towards centralised decentralisation of relations on the public-sector labour market. Our study suggests that, viewed in a broad West European perspective, decentralisation - despite the many attempts to achieve it and despite its adoption, in principle at least, by politicians and the social partners - has been on a modest scale. This is clearly evident if decentralisation is considered in relation to wage-development. The tight budgetary constraints felt by West European governments may well be the single deter mining factor in what can be regarded as rather rigid control, at centralised level, of the framework for wage development in Western Europe. Admittedly, collective agreements can be nego tiated and concluded at decentralised level - but preferably within the framework determined at centralised level.

B. Guy Peters e Anthony Barker (a cura di), Advising West European Governments. Inquiries, Expertise and Public Policy, Pittsburgh Edinburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press & Edinburgh University Press, pp. XI-228.

B. Guy Peters e Anthony Barker (a cura di), Advising West European Governments. Inquiries, Expertise and Public Policy, Pittsburgh Edinburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press & Edinburgh University Press, pp. XI-228. - Volume 26 Issue 2

Book Review: Advising West European Governments; Inquiries, expertise and Public Policy. By B Guy Peters and Anthony Barker (eds). (Edinburgh University Press, 1993, pp.208, £30.); The Politics of Expert Advice: Creating, Using and Manipulating Scientific Knowledge for Public Policy. By Anthony Barker And B Guy Peters (eds). (Edinburgh University Press, 1993, pp.129, £25.)

Book Review: <b><i>Advising West European Governments; Inquiries, expertise and Public Policy</i></b>. By <b>B Guy Peters and Anthony Barker (eds)</b>. (Edinburgh University Press, 1993, pp.208, £30.); <b><i>The Politics of Expert Advice: Creating, Using and Manipulating Scientific Knowledge for Public Policy</i></b>. By <b>Anthony Barker And B Guy Peters (eds)</b>. (Edinburgh University Press, 1993, pp.129, £25.)

Co-operation between Higher Education and Industry in the European Community: An Overview

The need for more effective co-operation between higher education and industry was recognised by most West European governments during the 1980s. This article provides an overview of the measures initiated to strengthen the relationship. The aim has not been to discuss such measures in depth, but to outline the main themes to emerge and, where appropriate, draw attention to questions which remain unanswered. The paper draws heavilly for its factual information on reports prepared by national experts as part of the EC Community programme in Education and Training for Technology (COMETT). [1]

Human Rights and Foreign Policy: Principles and Practice. Edited by Dilys M. Hill. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989. Pp. xv, 208. Index. $39.95.

Preface - Acknowledgements - Notes on the Contributors - PART 1 INTRODUCTION - Human Rights and Foreign Policy: Theoretical Foundations D.M.Hill - Human Rights and Contemporary State Practice D.M.Hill - PART 2 THE THEORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS - How Problematical are the Moral Foundations of Human Rights? M.Wright - Human Rights in Foreign Policy R.J.Vincent - Article 1 of the Human Rights Covenants: Its Development and Current Significance S.Morphet - PART 3 HUMAN RIGHTS IN CONTEMPORARY PRACTICE - The Helsinki Process and Human Rights in the USSR I.Elliot - Economic Aid as an Instrument for the Promotion of International Human Rights S.A.Cunliffe - Refugees and Foreign Policy G.Loescher - Root Causes of Displacement: The Legal Framework for International Concern and Action J.H usermann - The Refugee Policies of West European Governments: A Human Rights Challenge at our Doorsteps J.Cels - Current Challenges of Human Rights in Asia V.Muntarbhorn - Appendix - Index

The Transformation of Western Europe

Western Europe has undergone dramatic changes in the 40 years since European integration was launched. The institutions set up in the postwar years - OEEC/OECD, the Council of Europe, NATO, WEU, above all the European Communities - have set the framework for relations among the West European governments since the 1950s. Yet the character of the European economy has been transformed by industrial integration and technical change. The revolution in communications has created a European society, moving across national borders and responding to shared information. The security umbrella provided by the Americans against the evident Soviet threat has become less central. This study looks at the interaction of political, security, economic and social developments since the European Communities were founded, notes the magnetic attraction of an integrating Western Europe for a widening circle of countries, and draws conclusions from these past trends for Europe's likely future development.