Risto Heiskala is Professor and Director of the Institute for Advanced Social Research at the University of Tampere, Finland.Jari Aro is University Researcher at the University of Tampere, Finland.

• 1. The EU: A Deepening, Enlarging or Collapsing Union?.- 2. The Emergence of the European Union as a Very Incoherent Empire.- 3. An Extending Empire of Governance: The EU in Comparison to Empires Past and Present.- 4. A Promoter of Values or a Shopkeepers’ Empire? Economy and Society in the Europe 2020 Strategy and the Trade Policy of the EU.- 5. Eurostat: Making Europe Commensurate and Comparable.- 6. The Power of Indicators in Making European States Governable in the Europe 2020 Strategy.- 7. Contradictory Fiscal Governance in the European Union: Towards a Consolidation Empire?.- 8. Social Innovation Policy in the European Union.- 9. Reproducing or Remaking the Social Contract with Young People in the Europe 2020 Strategy?.- 10. Is the EU a Great Power? The Case of Natural Gas.- 11. An Empire Without an Emperor? The EU and Its Eastern Neighbourhood.- 12. Imperial Worldmaking: Innovation and Security in the EU Compared to the USA and China.- 13. Future Challenges for the EU: Five Scenarios from Collapse and Marginalisation to the Emergence of a Federal Empire

“Policy Design in the European Union – An Empire of Shopkeepers in the Making? offers a stimulating approach to analyse the EU as a supranational organisation, and its structures, processes, values and basic principles, differently. … aims of each chapter are well defined, their methodological approach is always comprehensible and the language used is straightforward, which all result in a better understanding of the highly complex design of the EU and enable the reader to ‘study the facts … .” (Peter Alsen, Acta Sociologica, Vol. 62 (3), 2019)“The volume does offer interesting, novel and intellectually stimulating insights to governance in a wide range of policy areas. Moreover, the editors’ empire perspective is thought-provoking, while many if not all of the chapters can be read as stand-alone texts, which makes the volume also an interesting source for scholars and practitioners interested only in particular policy areas.” (Timo Weishaupt, European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, Vol. 6 (2), 2019)