L'ouvrage s'articule en 5 parties : après la préface de Lüdger Kühnhardt, directeur du Centre de recherche sur l’intégration européenne (Zentrum für europäische integrationsforschung) de l’Université de Bonn, l’introduction présente les crises auxquelles l’UE a été confrontée ces dernières années, et la nécessité de penser dorénavant son avenir. L’introduction rappelle ensuite la démarche méthodologique prospective suivie par les contributeurs de l’ouvrage. Trois parties présentent les analyses prospectives selon trois axes concentriques : défis globaux et gouvernance mondiale ; environnement géopolitique de l’UE ; défis internes de l’UE. Ces articles présentent chacun un avenir possible dans les thèmes abordés, et l’impact de ces évolutions sur l’UE en 2020. La 4ème partie synthétise en trois scenarios les possibles avenirs de l’UE et présentent des recommandations politiques, en particulier pour la France et l’Allemagne. •Pourquoi l'ouvrage est-il publié, qu'est-ce qu'apporte la publication? L’ouvrage vise à sortir des études centrées sur la réforme des institutions européennes et les crises qu’a traversée l’UE ces dix dernières années, pour ouvrir une réflexion plus large sur l’avenir de l’UE. Maintenant que l’UE dispose d’un cadre institutionnel stabilisé autour du Traité de Lisbonne et des nouveaux outils politiques qu’il prévoit, elle doit prendre la mesure de sa place et de son influence sur la scène internationale et se projeter dans l’avenir. Ce champ de réflexion prospective n’avait été exploré que par des rapports politiques européens, présentés la Commission européenne et le Conseil européen, essentiellement centrés sur les évolutions internes de l’UE. Cet ouvrage apporte d’une part une expertise scientifique unique (21 chercheurs français et allemands), qui s’appuie sur leurs travaux respectifs, et qui débouche dans un second temps sur des recommandations politiques. Cet ouvrage présente aussi de manière originale une analyse qui part de la place de l’UE dans le monde, à la fois face à des défis globaux, où l’UE est sollicitée de plus en plus (climat, économie mondiale, migrations), sur son environnement géopolitique, où elle doit faire face à une concurrence croissante des autres puissances (Chine, Inde, Russie, etc.), pour arriver dans un dernier temps sur les risques internes de fragilisation de l’UE mais aussi sur ses capacités à rebondir face à la crise. Les articles courts, précis, facilitent une lecture rapide et orientée selon les thèmes préférés du lecteur. Ces analyses fines sont à la pointe de la recherche scientifique en matière d’économie, de sciences politiques. Elles permettent de comprendre les enjeux actuels de la politique internationale, européenne et nationale, tout en élargissant l’horizon à l’avenir des prochaines décennies. La 4ème partie élargit la réflexion scientifique sur des recommandations politiques.

This volume focuses on the assessments political actors make of the relative fragility and robustness of political orders. The core argument developed and explored throughout its different chapters is that such assessments are subjective and informed by contextually specific historical experiences that have important implications for how leaders respond. Their responses, in turn, feed into processes by which political orders change. The volume's contributions span analyses of political orders at the state, regional and global levels. They demonstrate that assessments of fragility and robustness have important policy implications but that the accuracy of assessments can only be known with certainty ex post facto. The volume will appeal to scholars and advanced students of international relations and comparative politics working on national and international orders.

​Europe is the name for a scintillating variety of historically emerged concepts, constantly developed and discussed over time. Its complexity and fuzziness is reflected in a multitude of myths, topoi, symbols and boundaries, which all constitute shared knowledge of the concept of EUROPE and which continue to influence attempts to (de- and re-)construct European identity. The case studies collected in this volume investigate the competing concepts of Europe in political and public discourses from a wide range of perspectives (e.g. frame semantics, discourse linguistics, multimodal analysis), focusing on the following aspects: How is EUROPE conceptualised, (re-)negotiated and legitimised by different political actors, political bodies and institutions? How does “the European idea” change throughout history and how is the re-emerging idea of nationality evaluated?

This book focuses on the impact of political leaders on the integration process led by the European Union. It aims at a better understanding of the European Union through the actions, contributions, and ideas of these outstanding characters to European integration and disintegration. By doing so, the book offers an entirely new perspective, presenting the actions of the main actors involved, their background, their historical time, their challenges and problems, and how they influenced the European Union's development. The authors in detail discuss different ideas connected to leaders, such as Jean Monnet and neo-functionalism, Spinelli and federalism or Churchill and the idea of cooperation. Furthermore, the book examines major policies and events, like the Common Agricultural Policy, the creation of the Euro as a consequence of the German reunification and Mitterrand’s reactions, or Brexit and its connection to the impact of Margaret Thatcher. The global essence of the book makes it a must-read for students, researchers, and scholars interested in a better understanding of the European Union's integration process.

Who is held responsible when EU policies fail? Which blame games resonate in the European public? European Blame Games challenges the conventional wisdom that the complexity of EU decision-making eschews clarity of responsibility, thereby rendering European blame games untargeted and diffuse. The book argues that the politicization of EU policies triggers a plausibility assessment of blame attributions in the public domain with the effect that European blame games gravitate towards true responsibilities, targeting those political actors involved in enacting a policy that is subsequently considered a policy failure. It distinguishes three kinds of European blame games. In scapegoat games, supranational EU institutions are held responsible for a policy failure. Renegade games occur when individual member state governments are considered the culprits for a failed policy. When responsibility for a policy failure is shared between EU institutions and member states, diffusion games prevail. The book also explores three conditions to explain when each of the three European blame games prevails: the type of policy failure, the type of policy making, and the type of policy implementation. To empirically probe these conditions, European Blame Games studies the blame games in ten instances of EU policy failures, including EU foreign policy, environmental policy, fiscal stabilization, and migration policy. Transformations in Governance is a major academic book series from Oxford University Press. It is designed to accommodate the impressive growth of research in comparative politics, international relations, public policy, federalism, and environmental and urban studies concerned with the dispersion of authority from central states to supranational institutions, subnational governments, and public-private networks. It brings together work that advances our understanding of the organization, causes, and consequences of multilevel and complex governance. The series is selective, containing annually a small number of books of exceptionally high quality by leading and emerging scholars. The series is edited by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Walter Mattli of the University of Oxford.