European Integration and Consensus Politics in the Low Countries

Much of the empirical research on Europeanization that has mainly focused on the larger member states, and tends to ignore that most Europeans live in small states and that most of the EU member-states are small states.

This book investigates how the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, respond to European integration and how their response is shaped by the consensual nature of their political institutions. European integration was a politically uncontested issue in the Low Countries, but their harmonious relationship with the EU has changed substantially. In this book, the authors focus not only on Europeanization, but also explore whether and how European integration may gradually undermine the prerequisites of consensus politics in the Low Countries. Drawing on consociationalism and Europeanization research they adopt a bottom-up analysis beginning with a set of policy areas, actors and venues and elaborating on how these have developed during the past two decades.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of European studies, European integration, European law, political science, European political economy and comparative politics.

Hans Vollaard is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Science, University of Leiden, the Netherlands.

Jan Beyers is Professor of Political Science and the Director of Antwerp Centre for Institutions and Multilevel Politics at Antwerp University, Belgium. He is also Visiting Research Professor at Agder University (Norway) and Senior Member of the Netherlands Institute of Government (NIG).

Patrick Dumont is a researcher at the Universite du Luxembourg, co-founder of the SEDEPE network with Keith Dowding, research associate to the Chair in parliamentary studies of the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies and member of the Comparative Politics Centre of the Universite Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve.