Representing Europeans - Richard Rose

Representing Europeans takes a fresh and quizzical look at the problems facing the European Union. Bringing decades of experience to bear on the deep, structural problems currently facing the EU, Richard Rose spells out why it can no longer carry on with integration by stealth. Extraordinary challenges - such as saving the Eurozone and maintaining the free movement of peoples - now impose high-profile economic and political costs. These create hugepolitical strains which EU institutions struggle to cope with. Rose shows the ways in which Europe's institutions do and do not represent its citizens, sometimes equally and sometimes unequally. This threatens worse crises of EU authority because people retain the power as national citizens to protest against theirgovernment making commitments in Brussels that they do not accept. The book's pragmatic approach rejects the assumption that more European integration is the solution for all of Europes problems. Likewise, it rejects UK withdrawal from the European Union because Britain cannot stop the world and get off. Instead, it suggests a pragmatic approach that asks about proposals emanating from Brussels: What problem does it address? How will this policy work? What are its visible costs and benefits?Instead of 'one size fits all' policies being imposed on 27 diverse countries, Rose recommends that enhanced European cooperation should be based on coalitions of the willing. Moreover, the active use of pan-European referendums on major reforms can test popular commitment to EU treaties thatpermanently advance European integration. Both European federalists and diehard Eurosceptics will alternately agree and disagree with the argument of this book. But they cannot ignore the challenge it raises to pay more attention to the concerns of the half a billion Europeans whom they claim to represent.

Richard Rose has lectured in 25 of the 27 member states of the European Union. He is Director of the Centre for the Study of Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow and part-time Professor at the European University Institute, Florence. Scholarly publications have earned him major scholarly honours from European and American institutions. Clarity in expressing ideas has resulted in contributions to print and television media from Moscow to Washington,and translations into 17 languages.
He is co-founder of the European Consortium for Political Research and holder of its lifetime achievement award. He is Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.

Rose offers a model of how to present data, and the tables throughout the book on such matters as the details of national referendums, the proportion of eligible citizens voting in treaty referendums or the policy coherence of party groupings in the European Parliament, as well as other important topics, are all worth the reader's thought and reflection. The chapter on political ideologies in the European Parliament is particularly impressive.
Albert Weale, University College London

Informed by good scholarship ... offers some original insights ... as informative on the way in which the EU works as it is judicious in its identification of the problems that European politics faces.
Times Higher Education

This provocative effort convincingly argues that the European Union has effectively reached its limit as a functioning multinational organization. This volume contains a wealth of data presented in clear graphic format ... Highly recommended.
S. Majstorovic, Choice Magazine