Book reviews. Democracy in Europe

Citation

Horsfield, C. (2001), "Book reviews. Democracy in Europe", European Business Review, Vol. 13 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.2001.05413bab.011

Book reviews. Democracy in Europe

Book reviews

Democracy in Europe

Larry SiedentopAllen Lane254 pp.ISBN: 0-71-399402-9£18.99

Keywords: Democracy, Europe

Until recently the debate about the constitutional issues surrounding the European Union has been piecemeal. We have not had much of an overview of what it means to create a democratic union out of the well-defined national states of Europe, each with an entrenched constitution of its own. Now Larry Siedentop, an Oxford University lecturer in Political Thought, has given us a work of great value, for he has managed to distil into a single volume of 254 pages the thoughts of many past and present political thinkers which relate to the subject of his own book. Here we have a flowing stream of consciousness of the issues which he believes should be addressed by those who are leading us towards the political unification of the European nations. To help us unravel the issues, he has provided a useful index and a comprehensive bibliography of the works which form the background to his ideas.

From these he draws the logical conclusion that for democracy to have any meaning within the context of the European Union, the union will have to become a federal state, with clear demarcation lines being drawn between the powers of the union and the powers of the states. This may be the logical outcome of what has already been achieved, but it would be difficult for the UK Parliament now to admit out loud that political union has been the goal from the start. Of course, without being told, people have noticed that with each new Treaty the drift has been in that direction, but for a British government to admit before a general election that the integrity of the nation state has been seriously compromised would be electoral suicide. Federalism to the Germans many mean a measure of decentralised government but to the British it means the abandonment of an ancient but adaptable unwritten constitution, whose people have for two hundred years been united under a Christian hereditary monarch. Already the fragmentation of the UK into regions has advanced since the last general election, and in time it will be seen that these regions owe more to the written constitution and institutions of a republican European Union than to the venerable British constitution and Parliament at Westminster.

Larry Siendentop must be congratulated on having drawn back the veil which has clouded the debate so far, to reveal not only the reality of the meaning of political union but also the difficulties which must be overcome for it to succeed.

The paperback edition is to be published 7 June 2001 at £8.99. ISBN 0140287930.

Charlotte Horsfield