Democracy in Europe: The EU and National Polities, Vivien A. Schmidt, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 326.

Vivien Schmidt is a specialist on the European Union (EU) who, like most, believes that it has taken over most of the functions of the member-states, that it is a pluralist democracy superior to theirs, that it is necessary and beneficial and the wave of the future. The only problem remaining to complete the subordination of the member-states posed in her book is that their politicians have not yet found the language or discourse to convince the public of these self-evident and unavoidable truths.