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Europe managing the crisis: the politics of fiscal consolidation

cannot be replaced by alternative forms of cooperation, unless these are willingly chosen by the countries in question. Thomas Mehlhausen’s book directly addresses the problematique of norms and interests in the EU. He explores various enlargements of the EU, in particular the Southern enlargement of the 1981 and 1986 as well as the Eastern enlargement of 2004 and 2007. The key question in this context is whether the EU’s norms such as the participatory norm or the inclusive norm determine the enlargements of the EU and whether the material interests of the member states are a better independent variable. The book deals with the complexity of both norms and interests without falling into reductionist traps of declaring the EU either a normative power or a community of interest. The book explains some of the enlargement phases (for instance the association phase) by introducing the term ‘anomie’ describing conflicting EU norms. Under such circumstances a utility-driven logic of member states’ individual interests becomes overwhelming, which can explain why there was for instance a reluctant association phase but a pro-active pre-accession phase during the Eastern enlargement of the EU. The framework of diffuse decision contexts incorporates both interests and norms and can compellingly explain why there was no opposition to the Southern enlargement of the EU among the EU member states and why technical issues under negotiation are more prone to the pursuit of particularistic interests. All these books are complementary in their specific approaches, as they describe not only various dimensions of European integration processes ‒ enlargements and external governance; they also refer to common problems, such as the impact of the European norms and rules, the resilience of domestic interests in the nation states and the legitimacy of the integration process itself. It is striking that all of the monographs stress that beyond the interplay of interests and norms factors such as the participation of local actors, the perspective of membership and the consistency of norms have an impact on how the European integration process proceeds.