In 2003, the government headed by Silvio Berlusconi attempted to take Italian public policy in a new direction. In social and labor market policy it challenged concertation; in foreign policy, it tried to transform the country's traditional Europeanist position into a pro-Atlantic stance; within the European Union, it promoted an inter-governmental position. The government's plans to alter the status quo did not always succeed, due to tensions within the majority. The opposition, in the meantime, mobilized around the issue of peace and the Iraq war. European Commission President Romano Prodi responded to the Ulivo coalition's fragmentation by proposing a unitary list for the 2004 European elections. There were also repeated attempts to change the features of public policy and political competition, countered by noteworthy forms of resistance.

Why is America contested by Europeans? The book seeks to answer this question and contribute to a better understanding of contemporary transatlantic tensions.
Adopting different theoretical perspectives, the contributors to this volume assess the European discontent with America and relate this to the unilateral turn of US foreign policy in the 2000s. American unilateralism is interpreted by all the authors as the expression of a new conservative nationalism which has been growing in the country since the 1970s and became culturally hegemonic after 9/11. This cultural hegemony found an institutional predominance with the elections of 2002 and 2004. The current conservative nationalism, with its unilateral foreign policy, has presented itself as a radical alternative to American liberal nationalism of the post-world war II era and its multilateral vision of the international system. Moreover, American conservative nationalism appears to be at logger-heads with the post-national evolution of the European states. The latter was largely supported by liberal America in the past and is in the final steps to provide a supra-national constitution for the future. Thus, while conservative nationalism is re-affirming the identity of America as a Westphalian state, Europe, through the European Union, is striving for a post-Westphalian global order. Bringing together leading American and European experts, with a preface by Robert A. Dahl this book explores:
- The rise of American conservative nationalism
- US Foreign policy
- Transatlantic relations
- Anti-Americanism
- The Iraq War
- The future of American political and cultural hegemony
This book will be vitalreading for students of international relations, foreign policy analysis, American and European politics.

Sergio Fabbrini argues that the European Union (EU) is made up of states pursuing different aims, rather than simply moving in the same direction at different speeds. He describes the alternative perspectives on the EU (an economic community, an intergovernmental union, and a parliamentary union), that led to multiple compromises in its structure and shows how the Euro crisis has called them into question. The book argues that a new European political order is necessary to deal with the consequences of the crisis, based on an institutional differentiation between the EU member states interested only in market co-operation and those advancing towards a genuine economic and monetary union. Such a differentiation would allow the latter group to become a political union, conceptualised as a compound union of states and citizens, while preserving a revised framework of a single market in which both groups of states can participate.

Today, the debate on world order is intense. As is always the case in times of transition, the global restructuring of international affairs is generating a deep reflection on how the world is, and how it should be reorganized. After the long frozen period of the cold war and the subsequent years marked by US unipolarism, the world has begun the new millennium with profound shifts. The relative decline of the USA, the crisis in the European Union, the consolidation of the BRIC emerging economies, and the diffusion of the power to non-state actors all constitute significant elements that demand a new conceptualization of the rules of the global game. In this pluralist and changing context, a number of different narratives are presented by the key actors in the international system. This book analyses these narratives in comparative terms by putting them in the wider framework of the transformation in global governance.

EU Federalism and Constitutionalism: The Legacy of Altiero Spinelli, edited by Andrew Glencross and Alexander H. Trechsel, represents the first book-length study of the travails of the implementation of federalism at the European level from the perspective of Altiero Spinelli's ideas and his political life, which were both devoted to a federally united Europe. It is also a timely publication given the protracted struggle to implement a new EU institutional architecture the 2009 Lisbon Treaty that is already being tested by the fallout from the global financial crisis. This fallout has brought into stark relief the tensions within the EU over the question of enhancing solidarity and federal unity or remaining a looser association of sovereign states. Hence by examining the successes and failures of federalism within the EU system, the book seeks to explain not only how the EU has reached its current impasse but also how it may fare in the future. To achieve this objective, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach that covers all three dimensions of the European project: historical, legal, and political. In this fashion, Andrew Glencross and Alexander H. Trechsel's EU Federalism and Constitutionalism: The Legacy of Altiero Spinelli offers a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the history, evolution, and future of federal principles and institutions in the European integration process."

Today, the debate on world order is intense. As is always the case in times of transition, the global restructuring of international affairs is generating a deep reflection on how the world is, and how it should be reorganized. After the long frozen period of the cold war and the subsequent years marked by US unipolarism, the world has begun the new millennium with profound shifts. The relative decline of the USA, the crisis in the European Union, the consolidation of the BRIC emerging economies, and the diffusion of the power to non-state actors all constitute significant elements that demand a new conceptualization of the rules of the global game. In this pluralist and changing context, a number of different narratives are presented by the key actors in the international system. This book analyses these narratives in comparative terms by putting them in the wider framework of the transformation in global governance.

Based on an analytical evaluation of both the weaknesses and strengths of the Italian political system, Italy in the European Union is the first book to offer a detailed and comprehensive description of Italy's contribution to European Union policy-making. The contributors to this volume systematically explore the role played by Italian institutional and noninstitutional actors in several decision-making processes. They show how Italian institutional actors define and promote national policy preferences that are compatible with those of the other European member states. However, the book functions on two levels: it is both a nuanced picture of Italy's role in the EU and a study of the EU as it has been transformed by subsequent waves of enlargement. In a compound polity of twenty-seven member states the formation of stable hegemonic coalitions is implausible-the concept of national interest, which still informs much of the literature on the EU, is logically and empirically unusable in many EU policy realms. Combining empirical investigation and theoretical analysis, this book is indispensable for scholars, students, and practitioners who study or observe Italian politics. It is also necessary for those who want to understand the transformation of European politics and the European Union's increasing development as a compound polity. Contributions by: Marco Brunazzo, Maurizio Carbone, Sabrina Cavatorto, Vincent Della Sala, Alessia Dona, Sergio Fabbrini, Paolo Foradori, Giorgio Giraudi, Renata Lizzi, Simona Piattoni, Paolo Rosa, Stefano Sacchi, Alberta M. Sbragia, Daniela Sicurelli, and Luca Verzichelli

Why is America contested by Europeans? The book seeks to answer this question and contribute to a better understanding of contemporary transatlantic tensions.
Adopting different theoretical perspectives, the contributors to this volume assess the European discontent with America and relate this to the unilateral turn of US foreign policy in the 2000s. American unilateralism is interpreted by all the authors as the expression of a new conservative nationalism which has been growing in the country since the 1970s and became culturally hegemonic after 9/11. This cultural hegemony found an institutional predominance with the elections of 2002 and 2004. The current conservative nationalism, with its unilateral foreign policy, has presented itself as a radical alternative to American liberal nationalism of the post-world war II era and its multilateral vision of the international system. Moreover, American conservative nationalism appears to be at logger-heads with the post-national evolution of the European states. The latter was largely supported by liberal America in the past and is in the final steps to provide a supra-national constitution for the future. Thus, while conservative nationalism is re-affirming the identity of America as a Westphalian state, Europe, through the European Union, is striving for a post-Westphalian global order. Bringing together leading American and European experts, with a preface by Robert A. Dahl this book explores:
- The rise of American conservative nationalism
- US Foreign policy
- Transatlantic relations
- Anti-Americanism
- The Iraq War
- The future of American political and cultural hegemony
This book will be vitalreading for students of international relations, foreign policy analysis, American and European politics.

The European Union - a supranational system with its own institutional characteristics and autonomy - has a structure and functional logic which are more similar to those of the US than those of European nation states. Yet, by and large, the EU and the US tend to be analyzed more as potential geopolitical and economic rivals or allies than compared as institutional peers.
By bringing together some of the most influential political scientists and historians to compare the European and American experiences of federalism, this book explores the future development, and seeks a better understanding, of a post-national European Union democracy. The book consists of three parts.
* How the EU has developed and the implications of the process of European federalization
* The features of American federalism, tracing the intellectual debate that led to the approval of the American federal constitution in 1787
* The future of European Union.
Robert A. Dahl concludes the volume, exploring the difficulties of democracy on an international scale. He looks at the prospects for deliberately created democratic institutions and the problems of size, legitimacy and identity.
This unique volume will be of interest to students and scholars studying European politics, American politics, federalism and comparative politics.

Sergio Fabbrini proposes a way out of the EU's crises, which have triggered an unprecedented cleavage between 'sovereignist' and 'Europeanist' forces. The intergovernmental governance of the multiple crises of the past decade has led to a division on the very rationale of Europe's integration project. Sovereignism (the expression of nationalistic and populist forces) has demanded more decision-making autonomy for the EU member states, although Europeanism has struggled to make an effective case against this challenge. Fabbrini proposes a new perspective to release the EU from this predicament, involving the decoupling and reforming of the EU: on the one hand, the economic community of the single market (consisting of the current member states of the EU and of others interested in joining or re-joining it); and on the other, the political union (largely based on the eurozone reformed according to an original model of the federal union).

Sergio Fabbrini proposes a way out of the EU's crises, which have triggered an unprecedented cleavage between 'sovereignist' and 'Europeanist' forces. The intergovernmental governance of the multiple crises of the past decade has led to a division on the very rationale of Europe's integration project. Sovereignism (the expression of nationalistic and populist forces) has demanded more decision-making autonomy for the EU member states, although Europeanism has struggled to make an effective case against this challenge. Fabbrini proposes a new perspective to release the EU from this predicament, involving the decoupling and reforming of the EU: on the one hand, the economic community of the single market (consisting of the current member states of the EU and of others interested in joining or re-joining it); and on the other, the political union (largely based on the eurozone reformed according to an original model of the federal union).

Sergio Fabbrini argues that the European Union (EU) is made up of states pursuing different aims, rather than simply moving in the same direction at different speeds. He describes the alternative perspectives on the EU (an economic community, an intergovernmental union, and a parliamentary union), that led to multiple compromises in its structure and shows how the Euro crisis has called them into question. The book argues that a new European political order is necessary to deal with the consequences of the crisis, based on an institutional differentiation between the EU member states interested only in market co-operation and those advancing towards a genuine economic and monetary union. Such a differentiation would allow the latter group to become a political union, conceptualised as a compound union of states and citizens, while preserving a revised framework of a single market in which both groups of states can participate.

This is a major new comparison of the American and European political systems. By deploying a powerful new model to analyze the two systems it draws some challenging conclusions about their increasing similarity. Professor Fabbrini argues that the process of regional integration in Europe over the last 60 years, has significantly reduced the historical differences between the democracies on either side of the Atlantic. The EU and the US are now similar because they represent two different species of the same political genus: the compound democracy.
The defining feature of compound democracy is the union of states and their citizens. Through such union, the states agree to pool their sovereignty within a larger integrated supra-state or supranational framework. They do so because these unions are primarily pacts for avoiding war. Because the states which made those unions were, and continue to be, asymmetrically correlated, any attempt to create a unified polity--that is a political system where the decision-making power is monopolized by only one institution--is likely to fail. He goes on to argue that the US and the EU are based on a multiple diffusion of powers which guarantees that any interest can have a voice in the decision-making process and no majority will be able to control all the institutional levels of the polity. This type of system allows an inter-states organization to operate as a supra-state polity--but it does so at the expense of decision-making capacity and accountability.

The European Union - a supranational system with its own institutional characteristics and autonomy - has a structure and functional logic which are more similar to those of the US than those of European nation states. Yet, by and large, the EU and the US tend to be analyzed more as potential geopolitical and economic rivals or allies than compared as institutional peers.
By bringing together some of the most influential political scientists and historians to compare the European and American experiences of federalism, this book explores the future development, and seeks a better understanding, of a post-national European Union democracy. The book consists of three parts.
* How the EU has developed and the implications of the process of European federalization
* The features of American federalism, tracing the intellectual debate that led to the approval of the American federal constitution in 1787
* The future of European Union.
Robert A. Dahl concludes the volume, exploring the difficulties of democracy on an international scale. He looks at the prospects for deliberately created democratic institutions and the problems of size, legitimacy and identity.
This unique volume will be of interest to students and scholars studying European politics, American politics, federalism and comparative politics.