The Undecided Power

Overview & Synopsis

The book traces the political struggles of politicians and civil servants, judges and academics to establish a European Union from the Hague Congress of Europe in 1948 to the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007. Frank Schorkopf reconstructs the project of a European political order as a coexistence and collaboration between three lines of thinking – constitutionalism, governmentalism, and pragmatism – in which constitutional authority is undecided. The sixteen chapters make it clear that although the actors wanted to create something new, they were hardly able to break away from their constitutional-history perspectives and were constantly confronted with classic questions about the architecture of power: questions of legitimacy and acceptance, of fundamental rights protection and identity.