The years 1973-1983 in the history of the European integration process are flanked by two periods of great expansion in the membership of the European Community and in its policies. By contrast, these 'middle' years have been described as a period characterised by economic crisis and stagnation. In this volume a group of international historians take a fresh look at this period of European integration. Based on fresh archival research and interviews the volume offers a new look on the history of this distinct epoque of European integration. Overall, the contributions take up a re-interpretation of the period as a period of crisis and stagnation and offer a discussion of the importance of the developments in the period for the resurgence of the integration process in the subsequent epoque of Commission president Jacques Delors.

Based on fresh archival research and interviews this book offers a new look at the history of this distinct era of European integration. Chapters from leading scholars include subjects ranging from European law to EC expansion, and from the European Currency System to the application of Greece to join the Community. Overall, the book provides a fresh interpretation of the period - as one not simply of crisis and stagnation.

The European Parliament (EP) – a powerful actor in today's European Union – was not intended to be more than a consultative assembly at first. Yet this book shows that the EP was much more influential in shaping Community policy in the early years of the integration process than either the founding Treaties or most existing scholarship would allow. It studies the EP’s institutional evolution through the lens of Community social policy, a policy area with a particularly strong ideational dimension. By promoting a European social dimension, Members of the EP (MEPs) presented the Parliament as the true representative of European citizens by channelling their interests and needs. MEPs thus emphasised the EP’s role as a provider of democratic legitimacy for Community politics, whilst at the same time trying to convince European citizens that the Communities could have a real and positive impact on their everyday lives.

A central question in political representation is whether government responds to the people. To understand that, we need to know what the government is doing, and what the people think of it. We seek to understand a key question necessary to answer those bigger questions: How does American public opinion move over time? We posit three patterns of change over time in public opinion, depending on the type of issue. Issues on which the two parties regularly disagree provide clear partisan cues to the public. For these party-cue issues we present a slight variation on the thermostatic theory from (Soroka and Wlezien (2010); Wlezien (1995)); our “implied thermostatic model.” A smaller number of issues divide the public along lines unrelated to partisanship, and so partisan control of government provides no relevant clue. Finally, we note a small but important class of issues which capture response to cultural shifts.

This collection sets a new agenda for conducting research on the EU and learns from past mistakes. In doing so it provides a state-of-the-art examination of social science research designs in EU studies while providing innovative guidelines for the advancement of more inclusive and empirically sensitive research designs in EU studies

The young Helmut Schmidt and British-German relations, 1945-74 -- Harold Wilson, 1974-76 -- James Callaghan, 1976-79 -- Margaret Thatcher, 1979-82.