Restructuring Territoriality: Europe and the United States Compared

Extract

Restructuring Territoriality: Europe and the United States Compared. Edited by Christopher K. Ansell and Guiseppe di Palma. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 316p. $70.00 cloth, $24.99 paper.

This interesting and thought-provoking book, based on a cross-national research project involving both U.S. and European scholars, provides a sustained meditation on the “restructuring of territoriality” in both the United States and the European Union. From initial starting points, such as John Ruggie's “unbundling of territoriality” and other writing on the challenges to the modern state system, from domestic privatization to globalization, the authors focus on the contemporary challenge to the sovereignty of the nation-state and the rebundling of territoriality associated with the development of the EU, reflecting a central concern with how the relationship between territory and governance is changing.