Europe Entrapped

<p>This is a strangely heart-warming book. While Claus Offeanalyses the weaknesses and failures of European integration withruthless precision, he also reminds us powerfully of the values ofthe European ideal, and shows how we could come closer to realisingthem - if only political leaders had the will and tenacity to doso. In the current climate of Europhobia, this is the nearest thingto realistic optimism that we are likely to get. Colin Crouch, University of Warwick <p>Claus Offe has written a passionate, probing, and deeplyperturbing book that both excoriates the European Union andprovides a glimpse of hope in the struggle for a social Europe.[CHANGES NEED TO BE CHECKED WITH THE AUTHOR] Gary Marks, UNC-Chapel Hill and RVU Amsterdam <p>After so many years without a resolution, it is hard to feelhopeful about the euro crisis. If there are grounds for hope theylie in this volume. In it Claus Offe describes how the citizens ofEurope, and of Germany in particular, frame the crisis. He explainshow that framing defines the range of feasible policy options. Offeshows how it is in the capacity of those citizens and their leaders-- of European society, in other words -- to modify that framing inways that open the door to a more constructive policy response.Offe's careful analysis deserves a wide audience. If it receivesone, Europe will be a better place. Barry Eichengreen, University of California, Berkeley <p>At the core of this book is the proposition that, though theEuro was a mistake, its undoing would be a greater mistake. Around this insight, Offe describes the logic of the economic,institutional, political and cultural traps that have been sprungon European polities. The great merit of this book is that itposes the fundamental question implicit in any attempt to escapesuch traps: who is to be the agent of change? No one readingthis book will think that this question has an easy answer; theywill realise that an answer is desperately called for. Albert Weale, University College London