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ABSTRACTBrexit has foregrounded radical divergences between the accounts of the UK’s constitutional order advanced by the UK Government and the devolved governments, with the distinctions coming into sharp relief in debates over legislation to sustain the UK’s internal market. This article examines the limits to the roots of the UK Government’s insistence that the UK is a unitary state, and not a union-state, in the textbook tradition of constitutional scholarship. Writers from A. V. Dicey to S. A. de Smith asserted that the UK was a unitary state largely as an adjunct to their accounts of parliamentary sovereignty. We also examine how the received orthodoxy of unitary accounts of the UK’s constitution came under increasing pressure after the advent of devolution, but that the UK’s membership of the European Union, and the operation of the principle of subsidiarity within European law, forestalled a considerable amount of constitutional contestation. The need to replace European law as a foundation of the UK internal market, and the UK Government’s attempts to exert control over this transition, has produced a sustained debate about what the union means after Brexit.

Ken Coates and Michael Barratt Brown (1993) A European Recovery Programme (Spokesman: London), 1-200 pp.; ISBN 0 851 24549 8 (pbk)Svein S. Andersen and Kjell A. Eliassen (eds) (1993) Making Policy in Europe; The Europeification of National Policy-making (London: Sage), i-vii, 1-284 pp.; ISBN 0 8039 8970 9 (pbk)David G. Haglund (ed.) (1993) From Euphoria to Hysteria: Western European Security after the Cold War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press), i-xxi, 1-335 pp.; index; ISBN 0 8133 8743 4 (hbk)Richard le Heron (1993) Globalized Agriculture (Oxford: Pergamon), i-xiv, 1-235 pp.; ISBN 0 080 40803 6 (pbk)Charles T. Goodsell (1994) The Case for Bureaucracy: A Public Administration Polemic (third edition) (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House), i-xiii, 1-226 pp.; ISBN 1 56643 007 0 (pbk)

This article falls into two parts. The first part presents an analysis of the causes of the Treaty of Maastricht. It is seen as the culmination of a process of European integration begun in the early 1980s, overlaid by the reaction of European leaders to the break-up of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Changes in the international system and the domestic politics of the member states are interpreted as providing the opportunity for the relaunching of European integration. The entrepreneurship of the Commission converted these opportunities into a reality. After presenting a synopsis of what was agreed at Maastricht the second part of the article provides an analysis of the new European Union. It is argued that the new Union suffers from constitutional confusion. Moreover, the people of Europe have not been offered an adequate opportunity of articulating their opinions on the Union. Thus the new Union may have difficulty in gaining legitimacy.

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Territorial Competition in an Integrating Europe: Local Impact and Public Policy. Edited by Paul C. Cheshire and Ian R. Gordon. Aldershot: Avebury, 1995. Pp.xv + 317. £40 (hardback). ISBN 1 85972 112 5Le Territoire pour Politiques: Variations Européennes. By Richard Balme, Philippe Garraud, Vincent Hoffmann-Martinot, Évelyne Ritaine (with contributions from Laurence Bonnet and Sonia Mazey). Paris: Éditions L'Harmattan, 1994. Pp.304. ISBN 2 7384 3083 XReorganiser L'espace Public (Zreorganizowac przestrzen publiczna). Edited by Jacek Wodz. Katowice: Editions 'Slask', 1993. Pp.234. ISBN 83 85831 04 5 Vie Politique Locale (Polityczne zvcie lokalne). Edited by Jacek Wodz. Katowice: Editions 'Slask', 1994. Pp.310. ISBN 83 85831 34 7The Politics of Local Economic Policy: the Problems and Possibilities of Local Initiative. By Aram Eisenschitz and Jamie Gough. London: Macmillan, 1993. Pp. xvi+309. £45 (hardback); £15.99 (paperback). ISBN 0 333 52174 9 and 0 333 52175 7Flexible Production: Restructuring of the International Automobile Industry. By Rebecca Morales. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994. Pp.vii+186. £39.50 (hardback). ISBN 0 7456 0752 7Immigrants and Nationalists: Ethnic Conflict and Accommodation in Catalonia, the Basque Country, Latvia and Estonia. By Gershon Shafir. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995. Pp.xvi+279. $19.95 (paperback). ISBN 0 7194 2674 2Ethnic Nationalism and Regional Conflict: the Former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Edited by W. Raymond Duncan and G. Paul Holman. Oxford and Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994. Pp.ix+218. £25.95 (paperback). ISBN 0 8133 8813 9The British Tradition of Federalism. By Michael Burgess. London: Leicester University Press/Cassell, 1995, Pp.xii+197. £39.50 (hardback). ISBN 0 7185 1495 5The Italian Revolution: the End of Politics, Italian Style? By Mark Gilbert. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995. Pp.204. £33.50 (hardback); £9.95 (paperback). ISBN 0 8133 8788 4 and 0 8133 2685 0The European Sisyphus: Essays on Europe, 1964-1994. By Stanley Hoffmann. Oxford: Westview, 1995. Pp.x+326. £51.95 (hardback); £13.50 (paperback). ISBN 0 8133 2380 0 and 0 8133 2381 9The Future of Europe. By Peter Coffey. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995. Pp.224. £39.95 (hardback); £12.95 (paperback). ISBN 1 85278 586 1 and 1 85278 587 X

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Although political scientists have acknowledged the role of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in European integration for some time, it has been rare for that acknowledgement to result in discussion of the ECJ; there is a tendency to leave analysis of the Court to the legal experts. The legal literature on European integration typically allocates disproportionate, even dominating, power to the Court. According to the conventional legal wisdom, the Court has manufactured a federal-type constitution for Europe more or less on its own out of the unpromising material of an international treaty.1 Very few legal scholars have questioned the legitimacy of the Court's pro-integration activism. This article challenges these assumptions. It illustrates the contribution of political institutions to the development of a crucial part of that 'constitution' - the protection of fundamental human rights. But it also points out the limits of that contribution, set by the undemocratic character of the Community's institutional structure. Finally it questions the legitimacy of the ECJ's role in the protection of human rights and, drawing on recent evidence from the case law of the Court, suggests that problems of legitimacy may undermine the authority of the Court and the supremacy of Community law.