| Review of: | Democracy in the New Europe by C. Lord, E. Harris |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Diana Schmidt |
| Reviewed in: | Journal of Common Market Studies |
| Date accepted online: | 02/11/2007 |
| Published in print: | Volume 45, Issue 03, Pages 745-769 |
Book Reviews
This book revisits and re-contextualizes essential principles and various practicsed forms of democracy within and beyond European states. The main argument, building a thread throughout the book, is that the prospects for democracy within and beyond the state are interdependent under the conditions of the new Europe. The twofold dimension beyond the state would include efforts to apply democratic standards to shared institutions at the EU level as well as efforts to promote democracy to countries within the European part of the international system. What appears at first to be some kind of common sense evolves into a venture of actually bringing these analytical dimensions together in a well-conceptualized and well-formulated way. The authors start by discussing democracy inside the state as a complex of various dimensions before looking at the diversity of democracy within European states and ways of contrasting and comparing these. Two more chapters follow on the above-mentioned two dimensions of democracy beyond the state. Another three chapters relate these various insights analytically while returning in more detail to the argument of their interdependence when seeking to secure democratic standards.
The slim appearance of the paperback should not raise low expectations about its content. Lord and Harris wish to address three audiences that are 'currently talking past each other' (p. 13): comparativists, political theorists and students of international relations. While trying to accomplish this major task, they have come up with a discussion of democratic conceptions and performances that should certainly be welcomed by two broader communities of readers. The engagement with existing theoretical literatures, concise review of longstanding as well as recent arguments and ideas on democracy, and the authors' strong argument on the interdependence of the democracy within and beyond European states provide valuable reflection and abstraction for the more empirically oriented students of European integration, democratic practice and democratization. At the same time, the many illustrative empirical examples and cases may offer interesting food for thought to theorists. However, given that a substantial part of the book is devoted to developments in post-communist democracies, one wonders whether indeed hardly any scholars within these countries have joined the theoretical debates about democracy promotion and democratization (except perhaps the one on euroscepticism). In this regard, the debates considered here indicate a remaining challenge to the academic discourse in this field which seems to mirror political practice where, as the authors note, Europeanization often means 'Westernization' from the perspective of the new democracies.