Political Unification Revisited

Amitai Etzioni is the founder and first president of the Communitarian Network and a university professor at George Washington University. Among his many books are Civic Repentance, The New Golden Rule, The Spirit of Community, and The Moral Dimension.

• Part 1 A Paradigm for the Study of Political UnificationChapter 2 Delineation of the Subject and of Elementary ConceptsChapter 3 Political UnificationPart 4 Distribution and Configuration of Integrating Powers: A Comparative AnalysisChapter 5 Theoretical FrameworkChapter 6 Integrating PowerChapter 7 A Union That Failed: The United Arab Republic (1958-61)Chapter 8 A Union That Failed: The Federation of the West Indies (1958-62)Chapter 9 A Stable Union: The Nordic Associational Web (1953-64)Chapter 10 A Growing Union: The European Economic Community (1958-64)Chapter 11 In Comparative Perspective

Political Unification Revisited is a highly original book with something old and something new, that is, with a new, long introduction that situates the bulk of the book, published in the l960s, within contemporary debates about the need for globaland regional government. The 1960s part of the book has stood the test of time, with its subtle analyses of the demands involved in building federations of nation-states illustrated through four case studies. The contemporary introduction provides fresh insights on the one federation of the four that lasted, the EU, while making compelling arguments about the unsustainability of a federation that remains stuck halfway to a real regional government. For Etzioni, the problem for the EU, as for any other regional or even global government—to be distinguished from governance arrangement—is that supranational political institutions need to be accompanied by moral dialogues that speak to the creation of a common core of communal values and bonds, without which any federation will founder. Etzioni makes this point eloquently, as he revisits his earlier work while updating it, to show that while well-constructed political institutions are essential, they cannot succeed without solid moral communities to underpi