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Best Book

A prize will be awarded annually for the book that has made the most substantial and original contribution to knowledge in the area of European Studies.

2008 Competition  |  2007 Winner  |  2006 Winner  |  2005 Winner

Best Book 2008

A prize of £100 will be awarded for the book that has made the most substantial and original contribution to knowledge in the area of European Studies. The prize is open to single-, dual- or multi-authored books in English or translated into English, with a publication date in 2007. Edited volumes are not eligible.

Publishers are invited to nominate books for the prize. They should supply two copies of each nominated book to the UACES office by 31 March 2008, clearly identifying the books as nominations for the prize.

Only Individual members or Student members of UACES will be eligible for the prize.

Best Book 2007

The prize for best book has been awarded jointly to two books this year. The jury considered both volumes to be equally meritorious and that both are worthy winners. Taken together they indicate not just the depth and quality of work in European Studies, but also how well our field can function as a transmission belt of ideas between areas and disciplines: Andrew Jordan and Adriaan Schout’s work is of relevance to all scholars of contemporary public policy and governance, and Lynn Dobson’s book draws on political philosophy to investigate EU citizenship in a way which should impact on both EU studies’ treatment of that issue and political philosophy understandings of citizenship.

Jordan and Schout’s book The Coordination of the European Union: Exploring the Capacities of Networked Governance was praised for raising ‘big political science questions’ regarding political coordination and network governance, and answering them by drawing on a rich empirical study focusing on EU environmental policy and its coordination at, and between, the various levels of governance in the emerging Euro-polity. The judges considered the book to be a ‘model of clarity, with a tightly argued thesis and structure’, and destined to be ‘a standard reference book across disciplines’. Setting the bar for work in the field very high, this book was considered by the judges to be an excellent and extremely deserving recipient of the award.

Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-9286957  (Discount price available for UACES Members)

Andrew Jordan, Adriaan Schout,
Alex Warleigh-Lack & John Kerr

Dobson’s book Supranational Citizenship was considered by the judges to demonstrate excellence in a different kind of scholarship from that of Jordan and Schout. Drawing neither on empirical work nor on tools adapted from the study of national citizenships, but rather on foundational principles of moral and political philosophy, the book makes an original contribution to the treatment of EU democracy and citizenship through close and rigorous theoretical argument. It also suggests how supranational forms of citizenship – such as that of the EU – might inspire rethinking of moral and political agency in other contexts and polities. Praised for its mastery of the normative political theory and more mainstream EU studies literatures, the book was considered by the judges to be an important contribution to EU studies, citizenship studies, and moral philosophy more generally.

Manchester University Press, ISBN 071-9069521   (Discount price available for UACES Members)

Stephen Wall and Lynn Dobson

Best Book 2006

The UACES prize for the book making the most substantial and original contribution to knowledge in the area of European Studies published during 2005 was awarded by the judges to Dr Georg Menz of Goldsmiths College, London for his book Varieties of Capitalism and Europeanization National Response Strategies to the Single European Market.

Oxford University Press, ISBN: 0199273863  (Discount price available for UACES Members)

Commending the book, the judges noted that this was an outstanding piece of work. Based on wide and rigorous empirical research, the analysis examines the impact of the liberalisation of services on the national labour markets and regimes of labour market regulation. The ostensibly narrow focus on ‘posted workers’ might seem a little restricting, but Menz succeeds very well in drawing out the broader implications of the study. In that sense, it is a text on the Europeanisation of public space in response to deeper market integration. It also delivers a range of core critiques of the types of concepts that social scientists working in the field tend to assume. It paints a much bigger picture of ‘capitalism’ under a process of transformation in three countries (France, Germany, Austria), although the research is not confined to those three. The singular importance of this work is that it takes forward a key debate on de-regulation and re-regulation in a detailed manner which has not been done so often – and certainly seldom so well. In that sense it tells us much about shifting currents in capitalisms, both at the level of relations between ‘capital’ and ‘labour’, and at the level of the institutional response to those shifting currents.

The judges also decided to make a ‘Special Award of Distinction’ to Dr Zara Steiner of New Hall, Cambridge, for her book The Lights that Failed: European International History 1919-1933.

Oxford University Press,  ISBN: 0198221142   (Discount price available for UACES Members)

The judges agreed that this was a very important book the publication of which should be marked in some way. It covers the European international history of the period 1919 to 1933. It is underpinned by a clear argument which is that the 1920s should not be seen as the decade that led to the disasters of the 1930s and thence to the Second World War, but as a decade in which decision-makers sought to find a way through the often competing claims of nationalism, and the demands for a greater internationalism. The hinge-years of 1929-33 revealed how order carefully nurtured can nevertheless collapse under massive economic, social and political pressures. The book is very clearly written. It eschews point-scoring, but combines authoritative narrative, analysis and pen-portraits in a way that ensures it will have a long shelf-life. However, it is not only authoritative, but it is also accessible, and requires no previous historical background. Finally, the book is highly relevant to those who are interested in contemporary Europe: for example, it teases out the ambitions, strengths and weaknesses of the League of Nations as an international organisation, and, focusing in particular on disarmament and rearmament, it has ‘lessons’ about the potential and limitations of international institutions.

Best Book 2005

The 2005 prize winner was Dr Stefan Auer for his book Liberal Nationalism in Central Europe, published by RoutledgeCurzon. Stefan Auer was awarded his prize at the UACES Annual Conference Dinner, in Zagreb, September 2005, by UACES Honorary President, John Kerr (Lord Kerr of Kinlochard).

Routledge Curzon,  ISBN: 0415314798 -  (Discount price available for UACES Members)

This book develops an argument about the positive value of liberal nationalism in contemporary European politics, asserting en route that the categories of civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism do not tell the whole story and can be misleading. The author also takes aim both at those who see an historical dividing line in Europe between the barbarians to the east, and western Europe; as well as at those would re-invent the European fissure-lines to put central Europe in with western Europe and shift the frontier of ‘civilisation’ further to the east (and south). He has three case studies on Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, through which he develops his argument about the existence and strengths of liberal nationalism. What impressed the jury was that that the author engages - with equal ease - the (essentially Western) literatures on nationalism (including liberal nationalism), and then goes on to interrogate these ideas with reference to particular political developments in the countries themselves – including the literatures therein.

Auer’s book is a serious and important book with a genuine intellectual argument, and takes forward the wider debates about the European continent. It can itself be imagined as a reference source for further work in this important area – an area of scholarship which is bound to be highly relevant in the coming years.

John Kerr and Stefan Auer

Last modified: Wednesday, 23 January 2008
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