Simon Usherwood – författare

The European Union (EU) stands out as a fascinatingly unique political organisation. On the one hand, it has shown the potential for developing deep and wide-ranging cooperation between member states, going far beyond that found anywhere else in the world. On the other, it is currently in the throes of a phase of profound uncertainty about its viability and future.Showing how and why the EU has developed from 1950 to the present day, this Very Short Introduction covers a range of topics, including the Union's early history, the workings of its institutions and what they do, the interplay between 'eurosceptics' and federalists, and the role of the Union beyond Europe in international affairs and as a peace-keeper. In this fully updated fourth edition, Pinder and Usherwood cover the migrant crisis and the UK's decision to leave the Union, set in the context of a body that is now involved in most areas of public policy. Discussing how the EU continues to draw in new members, they conclude by considering the future of the Union and the choices and challenges that may lie ahead. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Since the advent of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, a key turning point in terms of the crystallisation of opposition towards the European Union (EU), Euroscepticism has become a transnational phenomenon. The term ‘Euroscepticism’ has become common political language in all EU member states and, with the advent of the Eurozone, refugee and security crises have become increasingly ‘embedded’ within European nation states.Bringing together a collection of essays by established and up-and-coming authors in the field, this handbook paints a fuller, more holistic picture of the extent to which the Eurosceptic debate has influenced the EU and its member states. Crucially, it also focuses on what the consequences of this development are likely to be for the future direction of the European project. By adopting a broad-based, thematic approach, the volume centres on theory and conceptualisation, political parties, public opinion, non-party groups, the role of referendums – and the media – and of scepticism within the EU institutions. It also reflects on the future of Euroscepticism studies following the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the EU.Containing a full range of thematic contributions from eminent scholars in the field, The Routledge Handbook of Euroscepticism is a definitive frame of reference for academics, practitioners and those with an interest in the debate about the EU, and more broadly for students of European Studies, EU and European Politics.

In the fifty or so years since the Treaty of Rome, the European Union has evolved far beyond the scope of any other comparable entity. The EU is now a unique model of international cooperation and integration, and its reach extends into almost every sphere of the lives of its half a billion citizens. As well as the establishment of a single market, the Union has its own currency, is developing a foreign policy, and has a growing role in justice and cultural matters.Scholarly work on the European Union has undergone a similarly rapid evolution. For example, with the major expansions of the Union since the end of the Cold War, there has been a huge growth in the range and depth of research into the many challenges of integration. As serious thinking about and around this and other crucial aspects of the European Union continues to flourish and develop, this new title in Routledge’s acclaimed Critical Concepts in Political Science series meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of the subject’s vast literature and the continuing explosion in research output. Edited by Simon Usherwood, a leading EU scholar, it is a five-volume collection of foundational and cutting-edge contributions.The first volume in the collection (‘The Development of the European Union’) assembles the key work on the historical evolution of the European Union from the end of the Second World War to the present day. Even before the Constitutional Treaty proposed in 2004, there was much academic and political discussion about the degree and manner to which the EU transcended traditional political units and the materials gathered in Volume II (‘The Organization of the European Union and the Constitutional Turn’) explore the nature of the Union at this most fundamental level. The third volume in the collection (‘The Institutions of the European Union’) collects the most important research on the institutional structure of the EU. Here, the focus is on the dynamic processes at work within institutions and the models of understanding that academics have developed. Volume IV (‘Member States as Actors in the European Union’), meanwhile, brings together the best work on particular member states, considering, for example, why certain states have remained dominant actors within the Union, despite the scope and depth of EU expansion. In addition, the processes and outcomes which underpin this dominance—such as europeanisation—are also explored. The final volume in the collection (‘Citizens as Actors in the European Union’) concentrates on a very particular feature of the Union: the role of individual citizens. The material gathered here probes issues such as the perceived ‘democratic deficit’ in the Union.Fully indexed and with comprehensive introductions to each thematic part, newly written by the editor, which place the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, The European Union is an essential work of reference. It is destined to be valued by political science scholars and researchers—as well as by EU specialists and policy-makers—as a vital one-stop research tool.

This book offers a novel perspective on the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, providing insights to the ways in that domestic concerns interact with European policy to produce sometimes counter-intuitive outcomes.The 2016 decision by the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union was a seminal one for both political parties in the UK. This innovative volume considers the extent to which the interrelation between the national and the European arenas produced significant opportunities for reshaping political action. The nesting of these two levels matters, firstly in allowing for the mobilisation of domestic actors around European issues and secondly, in explaining why seemingly unimportant or counter-productive actions are taken. The tensions this generated reached a critical juncture with the referendum, a rupture that highlights the extent to which a nominally second-order vote can have fundamental impacts on the first order’s preferences.Bringing together scholars from a wide range of approaches and covering various aspects of the Brexit process, this book offers a significant contribution to improving our understanding of an event that will shape British and European politics for a generation. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary European Studies.

This book offers a novel perspective on the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, providing insights to the ways in that domestic concerns interact with European policy to produce sometimes counter-intuitive outcomes.The 2016 decision by the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union was a seminal one for both political parties in the UK. This innovative volume considers the extent to which the interrelation between the national and the European arenas produced significant opportunities for reshaping political action. The nesting of these two levels matters, firstly in allowing for the mobilisation of domestic actors around European issues and secondly, in explaining why seemingly unimportant or counter-productive actions are taken. The tensions this generated reached a critical juncture with the referendum, a rupture that highlights the extent to which a nominally second-order vote can have fundamental impacts on the first order’s preferences.Bringing together scholars from a wide range of approaches and covering various aspects of the Brexit process, this book offers a significant contribution to improving our understanding of an event that will shape British and European politics for a generation. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary European Studies.