Book Reviews

Contentious Europeans: Protest and Politics in an Emerging Polity. Ed-

ited by Doug Imig and Sidney Tarrow. New York: Rowman & Littlefield,
2001. Pp. x⫹294. $75.00 (cloth); $26.95 (paper).

John A. Hall
McGill University

This is an attractive and valuable collection of scholarship. First, it en-

gages fluffy theoretical speculation with controlled evidence. Second, it is
thoughtful, open-minded, lucid, and carefully organized. Third, it is at
the cutting edge of debate about both the European Union and social
movements. Fourth, it offers sustained reflection on key topics of the age
and also of social science, notably state-building, ancient and modern,
and the potential for the emergence—and not just in Europe—of trans-
national social movements. This is research at its best, and the book
deserves wide readership.
After a careful discussion of Europe as a composite polity (a useful
term borrowed from historians of early modern Europe), the editors focus
attention on three questions: Will the creation of supranational institutions
lead to European contention? Is it likely that the form of such contention
will result in movements or lobbies? Will identities change, becoming
genuinely transnational? Imig and Tarrow cast some light on the first of
these issues, and on the social background of protesters, by means of a
data set of European contention (interestingly discussed by Imig in an
appendix) drawn from Reuters. Protest about policies derived in Brussels
in fact takes place overwhelmingly at the domestic level. But in order to
deepen that finding, and to examine the other two questions, case studies
are provided.
Andrew Martin and George Ross find that European Union organi-
zation is limited, and anyway, very much the result of invitation and
funding by supranational agencies. Two chapters on peasants—one by
Bert Klandermans, Marga de Weerd, Jose Manuel Sabucedo, and Mauro
Rodriguez, and the other by Evelyn Bush and Pete Simi—clearly establish
national patterns of response, which often pit peasants in one country
against those in another. Much light is cast on the mechanics behind such
patterns, notably about the link between high levels of education and
European protest, and between domestic politics and strategies of national
representation within the Union. If all this shows that the principal dis-
advantaged social classes are not well-organized at the European level,
are matters different with more specialized groups—environmentalists,
women, and migrants—to whom attention turns when assessing whether
lobbies will prevail over movements? Dieter Rucht’s discussion of envi-
ronmentalists and Valerie Guiraudon’s of migrants portray “virtual” lob-
bies whose lack of core support renders them relatively powerless. In
contrast, Barbara Hefferich and Felix Kolb find that the European
Women’s Lobby had a substantial impact upon the Amsterdam Treaty

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 American Journal of Sociology

of 1997. If one reason for this was the effective use of multilevel coor-
dination tactics, another was the presence of a particular window of op-
portunity—albeit, a window which was recognized and seized. The case
studies draw to a conclusion with a pair of papers describing something
like genuine transnational action. Pierre Lefebure and Eric Lagneau show
how media interest created such an identity when Renault closed its fac-
tory at Vilvoorde in Belgium. Vera Kettnaker has a still stronger case to
report—that of European protest, directed firmly against the United
States, about the introduction of genetically engineered crops. It should
be emphasized, however, that the factors lying behind both cases were
so idiosyncratic as almost to suggest that transnational movements are
unlikely to occur on any regular basis.
Tarrow concludes the volume by insisting on the complexity of the
European Union. He is interesting when seeking to interpret the findings,
as when arguing that contention at the domestic level about Europe might
mean the Europeanization of nation-states rather than the continuation
of business as usual. Further, he is surely right to insist that the European
project is as yet unfinished and to argue that strengthening the powers
of the parliament would not undermine the potential for European con-
tention. But he does suggest that transnational political identities are likely
to emerge. I cannot follow him here, not least because of the evidence
provided in the book. For the European Union does not look set to follow
national state development. National states bred contention because they
conscripted and taxed. The European Union is a military worm, and its
own fiscal extraction is less than 2% of its GDP. Perhaps more important,
the societies that would have to lose salience were Europe truly to become
transnational rather than, as is now the case, predominantly international,
are well-established nations—with resources and histories altogether un-
like the local societies that they themselves absorbed. If Europe becomes
too centralized, there may yet be nationalist reactions—albeit with the
personnel of such movements coming from lower, rather than, as was
once the case in the history of European nationalism, from higher social
classes. But we cannot be sure: the EuropeanUnion is indeed a moving
target.

Black Nationalism in American Politics and Thought. By

Dean E. Robinson. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp.
ix⫹171. $50.00 (cloth); $18.00 (paper).

G. Reginald Daniel
University of California, Santa Barbara

Dean E. Robinson, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts,

Amherst, provides a concise, yet richly detailed, examination of black
nationalism in U.S. politics and thought. The book makes an important

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