Books: POLITICS

Series Title
Series Details 04/01/01, Volume 7, Number 01
Publication Date 04/01/2001
Content Type

Date: 04/01/01

Title: Les Français: Réflexions sur le destin d'un peuple

Author: Valéry Giscard d'Estaing

Publisher: (Plon)

In this work of what would once have been called “political economy”, the only living former French president examines why his countrymen are out of step with the modern world.

For EU-watchers, the book is most interesting for its polemic on what the author considers France's waning political influence in Europe.

He cannot quite believe that his successors failed to win either the home or the presidency of the European Central Bank, and calls for a reconvening of the original six Community members to decide whether the federalist-intergovernmentalist vision will win.

Title: Guerres contre l'Europe

Author: Alexandre Del Valle

Publisher: Syrtes

This fascinating, often appalling and paranoid work by a researcher at l'Université Paris VIII provides an interesting, if extreme, insight into one wing of French foreign policy thinking.

Del Valle argues that the US is in a “cynical” alliance with Islamic forces as well as the secular Turkish military to reinforce its strategic position, especially versus emerging European powers. This reached its crescendo in Bosnia, where the US and its European allies (led by the UK) imposed peace under Islamic activist Alia Izetbegovic, then Kosovo where 200,000 Serbs have been “cleansed” away.

Title: Brussels Bureaucrats? The Administration of the EU

Author: Anne Stevens with Handley Stevens

Publisher: Palgrave

It is about time someone wrote this book and Palgrave's 'European Union Series' should be congratulated for letting Aston University's professor of European Studies do it. The writers conducted 40 interviews between 1995 and 1999, as the Prodi Commission took office.

The Stevenses examine the history of the Communities which produced the administrative model which Brussels has been stuck withfor four decades, take a dispassionate look at the administration's strange forms of admission and promotion, and provide the definitive pay-and-conditions guide.

Title: Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour

Author: Andrew Rawnsley

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton

There have been a spate of books spilling the bad blood inside Tony Blair's UK government, but this is the one to get. Rawnsley uses the journalistic approach pioneered by Bob Woodward (and disliked by many) of interviewing participants and then not saying who they are.

As a result, the biggest thanks in the footnotes are for 'private information'. What it does do, however, is liberate people who would otherwise only make anodyne remarks. Not one of the accounts of fights over EU policy contained in the book has been denied. That says it all.

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