Shaping Europe: France, Germany, and Embedded Bilateralism from the Elysée Treaty to Twenty-First Century Politics

Ulrich Krotz · Joachim Schild

Dec 2012 · OUP Oxford

About this eBook

France and Germany have played a pivotal role in the history and politics of European integration. Yet, paradoxically, a study that systematically investigates the interrelated reality of Franco-German bilateralism and multilateral European integration has been conspicuously lacking. Formulating an approach the authors call "embedded bilateralism", this book offers exactly that. It scrutinizes in empirical and historical detail the bilateral Franco-German order and France and Germany's joint role in shaping Europe over the past half century. The book addresses two key questions regarding France and Germany in Europe from the Elysée Treaty to the twenty-first century: Why have France and Germany continued to hang together in an especially tight relationship for over five decades amidst frequently dramatic domestic change, lasting differences, and fundamental international transformation? And why has the joint Franco-German impact on shaping Europe's polity and European policies, while fundamental, proved so uneven across political domains and time? In answer to the first question, Shaping Europe argues that the actions and practices of the Franco-German order-its regularized bilateral intergovernmentalism, symbolic acts and practices, and parapublic underpinnings-together have rendered this bilateral connection historically resilient and politically adaptable. Regarding the second question, the book holds that different combinations of a limited number of factors located at the bilateral, domestic, regional European, and international levels explain central aspects of variation. Together, these factors condition and modulate France and Germany's joint impact on Europe. In pursuing its research questions, theoretical work, historical reconstructions, and empirical analyses, Shaping Europe fruitfully combines the study of European integration, EU politics and policymaking, Franco-German affairs, and French and German politics with general theorizing and conceptual grounding in international relations and political science.

About the author

Ulrich Krotz is Professor at the European University Institute (EUI), where he holds the Chair in International Relations in the Political Science Department and the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University, has taught at Oxford University and Brown University, and has held various research positions at Princeton University, the EUI, and Harvard University. He is author of Flying Tiger: International Relations Theory and the Politics of Advanced Weapons (Oxford University Press, 2011) and History and Foreign Policy in France and Germany (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming). Recent journal publications have appeared in World Politics, International Security, the European Journal of International Relations, European Security, Foreign Policy Analysis, and the Journal of Common Market Studies. Joachim Schild is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Trier. Previously he was a research associate at the Franco-German Institute, Ludwigsburg, and senior research associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, SWP) in Berlin, as well as a guest researcher at the Centre de Recherches Politiques (CEVIPOF) at Sciences Po, Paris. His books include Debating Europe: The European Parliament Elections, 2009 and Beyond (Nomos, 2011, edited with Robert Harmsen). He has published journal articles, among others, in the Journal of Common Market Studies and the Journal of European Public Policy.