"Desmond Dinan cuts through the complexities of the European Union to explain clearly the evolution of European integration from the 1950s to the present." "This new edition of his book retains the familiar three-part structure - history, institutions, and policies - but includes two entirely new chapters: one on key developments in the 1993-1999 period (e.g., the 1995 enlargement, the 1996-1997 intergovernmental conference, the Amsterdam Treaty, and preparations and prospects for EU enlargement into Central and Eastern Europe) and one exploring the increasingly complicated political and economic relationship between the United States and the EU, the world's leading trading powers."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A comprehensive, critical assessment of the EU after Brexit The European Union is a political order of peculiar stamp and continental scope, its polity of 446 million the third largest on the planet, though with famously little purchase on the conduct of its representatives. Sixty years after the founding treaty, what sort of structure has crystallised, and does the promise of ever closer union still obtain? Against the self-image of the bloc, Perry Anderson poses the historical record of its assembly. He traces the wider arc of European history, from First World War to Eurozone crisis, the hegemony of Versailles to that of Maastricht, and casts the work of the EU’s leading contemporary analysts – both independent critics and court philosophers – in older traditions of political thought. Are there likenesses to the age of Metternich, lessons in statecraft from that of Machiavelli? An excursus on the UK’s jarring departure from the Union considers the responses it has met with inside the country’s intelligentsia, from the contrite to the incandescent. How do Brussels and Westminster compare as constitutional forms? Differently put, which could be said to be worse?

Brexit traces the implications of the UK’s projected withdrawal from the EU, placing short-term political fluctuations in a broader historical and social context of the transformation of European and global society. This book provides a forum for leading Eurosociologists (broadly defined), working inside and outside the UK, to rethink their analyses of the European project and its prospects, as well as to reflect on the likely implications for the UK.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was one of the pre-eminent figures of the Italian Renaissance – he was also one of the most paradoxical. He spent an incredible amount of time writing notebooks, perhaps even more time than he ever held a brush, yet at the same time Leonardo was Renaissance culture’s most fanatical critic of the word. When Leonardo criticized writing he criticized it as an expert on words; when he was painting, writing remained in the back of his mind. In this book, Joost Keizer argues that the comparison between word and image fuelled Leonardo’s thought. The paradoxes at the heart of Leonardo’s ideas and practice also defined some of Renaissance culture’s central assumptions about culture and nature: that there is a look to script, that painting offered a path out of culture and back to nature, that the meaning of images emerged in comparison with words, and that the difference between image-making and writing also amounted to a difference in the experience of time.

Tells the story of European integration from its modern origins in the 1940s to the challenges of the new century. The author captures the dynamics of the evolving debates about European unity and examines the factors that led to today's union.

"Marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, this publication examines some of the key developments in European integration from an Irish perspective." "The book explores different aspects of Ireland's relationship with the process of European integration, including Ireland's relationship with the six founding members before it joined in 1973, and how European developments formed the backdrop to domestic debates over changing Irish economic policy in the 1950s and 1960s. The increasing importance of the European Union in different policy areas is also analysed, as is the impact the Union has had on the work of ministers and the Oireachtas, and how EU business is managed within government departments. The publication also reflects on the different amendments to the Treaty of Rome, and how Ireland has contributed to the negotiation of new treaties since the 1980s." "With contributions from both practitioners and academics, the book offers a diverse range of perspectives on how European developments have impacted on Ireland, as well as reflections on what Ireland has brought to the European integration project. In these different ways the authors offer interesting new insights into Ireland's involvement in the integration process, and illustrate how Ireland's position within the European Union has matured and entered a new phase of development."--BOOK JACKET.