Christopher J. Bickerton – författare

The twenty years since the signing of the Maastricht Treaty have been marked by an integration paradox: although the scope of European Union (EU) activity has increased at an unprecedented pace, this increase has largely taken place in the absence of significant new transfers of power to supranational institutions along traditional lines. Conventional theories of European integration struggle to explain this paradox because they equate integration with the empowerment of specific supranational institutions under the traditional Community method. New governance scholars, meanwhile, have not filled this intellectual void, preferring instead to focus on specific deviations from the Community method rather than theorizing about the evolving nature of the European project.The New Intergovernmentalism challenges established assumptions about how member states behave, what supranational institutions want, and where the dividing line between high and low politics is located, and develops a new theoretical framework known as the new intergovernmentalism. The fifteen chapters in this volume by leading political scientists, political economists, and legal scholars explore the scope and limits of the new intergovernmentalism as a theory of post-Maastricht integration and draw conclusions about the profound state of political disequilibrium in which the EU operates. This book is of relevance to EU specialists seeking new ways of thinking about European integration and policy-making, and general readers who wish to understand what has happened to the EU in the two troubled decades since 1992.

The twenty years since the signing of the Maastricht Treaty have been marked by an integration paradox: although the scope of European Union (EU) activity has increased at an unprecedented pace, this increase has largely taken place in the absence of significant new transfers of power to supranational institutions along traditional lines. Conventional theories of European integration struggle to explain this paradox because they equate integration with the empowerment of specific supranational institutions under the traditional Community method. New governance scholars, meanwhile, have not filled this intellectual void, preferring instead to focus on specific deviations from the Community method rather than theorizing about the evolving nature of the European project. The New Intergovernmentalism challenges established assumptions about how member states behave, what supranational institutions want, and where the dividing line between high and low politics is located, and develops a new theoretical framework known as the new intergovernmentalism. The fifteen chapters in this volume by leading political scientists, political economists, and legal scholars explore the scope and limits of the new intergovernmentalism as a theory of post-Maastricht integration and draw conclusions about the profound state of political disequilibrium in which the EU operates. This book is of relevance to EU specialists seeking new ways of thinking about European integration and policy-making, and general readers who wish to understand what has happened to the EU in the two troubled decades since 1992.

Technocratic appeals to expertise and populist invocations of ''the people'' have become mainstays of political competition in established democracies. This development is best understood as the emergence of technopopulism—a new political logic that is being superimposed on the traditional struggle between left and right. Political movements and actors—such as Italy''s Five Star Movement and France''s La Républiqe En Marche—combine technocratic and populist appeals in a variety of ways, as do more established parties that are adapting to the particular set of incentives and constraints implicit in this new, unmediated form of politics. In the first book-length treatment of the phenomenon of technopopulism, we combine theoretical and historical approaches, offering a systematic definition of the concept of technopopulism, while also exploring a number of salient contemporary examples. This book provides a detailed account of the emergence of this new political logic, as well as a discussion of its troubling consequences for existing democratic regimes. It ends by considering some possible remedies that go beyond the simplistic idea that in the right ''dose'' populism and technocracy can counter-balance one another.

Technocratic appeals to expertise and populist invocations of ''the people'' have become mainstays of political competition in established democracies. This development is best understood as the emergence of technopopulism—a new political logic that is being superimposed on the traditional struggle between left and right. Political movements and actors—such as Italy''s Five Star Movement and France''s La Républiqe En Marche—combine technocratic and populist appeals in a variety of ways, as do more established parties that are adapting to the particular set of incentives and constraints implicit in this new, unmediated form of politics. In the first book-length treatment of the phenomenon of technopopulism, we combine theoretical and historical approaches, offering a systematic definition of the concept of technopopulism, while also exploring a number of salient contemporary examples. This book provides a detailed account of the emergence of this new political logic, as well as a discussion of its troubling consequences for existing democratic regimes. It ends by considering some possible remedies that go beyond the simplistic idea that in the right ''dose'' populism and technocracy can counter-balance one another.