European Regionalism and the Left

Europe has long divided the Left, and these divisions have re-emerged in the current crisis. This book provides fresh and challenging analyses of Europe, written from a variety of perspectives. It asks whether Europe still has a progressive potential, and under what conditions this might be realised. As the crisis deepens this book is essential reading for understanding the political choices that confront us. -- Professor Andrew Gamble. At a time of crisis, this volume brings together some of the leading lights of Left scholarship in the UK to provide both a timely analysis of the Left's role in the European project as well as some creative ideas about possible ways forward. -- Mark Beeson.

Written against a backdrop of global economic and political turbulence as well as mounting crisis for the European Union, this book examines the relationship between contemporary European regionalism and the broadly defined political left.

Written against a background of global economic and political turmoil, including crisis and uncertainty surrounding the European Union, European Regionalism and the Left offers new critical insights into a range of fundamental problems facing the project of European integration. Issues covered include: the limits and possibilities of European Monetary Union; the impact of European regionalism on the political organisations of the European left; European regionalism and the crisis of social democracy; Russia and the limits to EU regionalism; and the contradictions of Eurocentric politics in an age of globalisation.

The book brings together contributions from international scholars drawing on a rich diversity of critical approaches to international political economy, European integration studies, European politics and social theory. Unlike many earlier critical studies of this subject, European Regionalism and the Left consciously eschews any specific radical theoretical narrative or research programme in favour of an open-ended critical engagement with the political economy of contemporary Europe. As such it attempts to open up left analyses of Europe to broader traditions of critical inquiry.