Writing the Rules for Europe

Experts, Cartels, and International Organizations

How come Europe is often conflated with the European Union? How have European governance structures been shaped?

Writing the Rules for Europe argues that the future of Europe depends on finding a new arrangement between democracy and technocracy. Drawing on fresh archival evidence and using engaging case studies of steel and railways, this book tells the stories of experts, cartels and international organisations that have written the rules of Europe since around 1850. The book explores the ‘hidden integration’ of Europe - forms of integration that were not always visible but affected the citizens of Europe in their everyday lives. Richly illustrated and engagingly written, the book de-centres the present-day European Union in a new long-term understanding of European integration.

Authors

Wolfram Kaiser Professor

Wolfram Kaiser is Professor of European Studies at the University of Portsmouth, UK, and Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, Belgium. He has published widely on European integration, Christian democracy and the history of globalisation. His books include Shaping European Union (2018), (ed. with J.-H. Meyer) International Organizations and Environmental Protection (2017), (with S. Krankenhagen and K. Poehls) Exhibiting Europe in Museums: Transnational Networks, Collections, Narratives and Representations (2014), (ed. with J.-H. Meyer) Societal Actors in European Integration: Polity-building and Policy-making 1958-92, Christian Democracy and the Origins of European Union (2007).

Johan Schot (Series editor) Professor

Johan Schot is Professor of Comparative Global History at the Utrecht Centre for Global Challenges, University Utrecht. He is Director of the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC) and the Deep Transitions research project. He was previously Director of the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex Business School. In 2009, Schot was elected to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). He is the author of many influential publications including Transitions Towards Sustainable Development: New Directions in The Study of Long Term Transformative Change (Grin, Rotmans & Schot) and Technology and the Making of the Netherlands: The Age of Contested Modernization (Lintsen, Rip & Schot). For more information see www.johanschot.com and follow on Twitter @Johan_Schot.

Praise

"There have been many studies of European integration, but this richly illustrated and lucidly written book is the first to illuminate the evolution of the Union as a system for managing transnational processes. The result is an epic history of the experts, companies and international organisations that transformed the continent. What emerges is a new and important interpretation: the Union was not born out of the ruins of war in the 'zero hour' of 1945, but is rather the fruit of a deep history that extends back to the technocratic internationalism of the mid-nineteenth century. A landmark book."

Chris Clark

Cambridge University, UK
"Jean Monnet, Konrad Adenauer, and Paul-Henri Spaak – the names of these and several other statesmen of the postwar era are often cited to explain how and when European integration started. This book offers a very different explanation by highlighting the role that experts and technocrats have played in defining and implementing rules of European governance since the mid-19th century. An innovative interpretation, and a very readable and beautifully illustrated book."

Kiran Klaus Patel

Maastricht University, Netherlands