Routledge Studies on Government and the European Union

What is actually governed at the scale of the European Union (EU)? Some domains of societies and economies in Europe certainly seem to be, but the government of many others appears instead to take place at global, national or sub-national scales. The principal objective of this book series is to provide a sustained and structured space within which a cumulative set of books on what the EU actually governs would be published. These will depart from much of mainstream ‘EU studies’ to propose instead social science theory driven analyses that better reflect and reveal the transnational character of government in contemporary Europe.

This series of books will share a common focus and a commitment to detailed, theoretically driven but readable empirical studies. Although authors will differ slightly here, this focus postulates in general that:

1. Far from being a system composed uniquely of ‘national’ and ‘supranational’ bodies, the government of the EU is enacted by all the public and private practitioners who participate in the construction and institutionalization of ‘European public problems’;
2. This government is inscribed in a strongly fragmented European polity. However, its fragments –be they sectoral or territorial- seldom map neatly onto the frontiers of the member states;
3. Integrating this government and polity constitutes a permanent challenge not only for the formulation of European public problems and their treatment (eg. for environmental protection), but also for the legitimation of these processes and the actors they involve (eg. Commission representatives).

The series is edited by Professor Andy Smith, Research Director at the at the National Foundation for Political Science, University of Bordeaux. All proposals for the series should be submitted either to the editor or the publishers.

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