The European Union (EU) poses quite profound questions for scholars and students of the social and political sciences. This benchmark Handbook is designed to provide an authoritative state-of-the art guide to the scope of the field suitable for both established scholars and students of the EU; reflect and contribute to the debates about the nature of the field of EU studies and EU politics in particular; and explore in detail the development of the many approaches to the study of EU politics. Divided into four sections, the Handbook focuses on theorizing European integration; the EU as polity; politics and policy making in the EU; and the EU and the international system.

Introduction

Introduction

Introduction
Knud ErikJørgensen, Mark A.Pollack and BenRosamond

A volume that is self-advertised as a ‘handbook’ requires some justification. ‘Handbook’ is suggestive of a claim to some sort of authority. It further connotes a manual or a one-stop guide to its subject. The organization and compilation of a handbook for an academic field is a risky enterprise, not least because the chances of conforming to the expectations and understandings of all of that field's practitioners are slim (to say the least).

Most readers will probably have a good sense of what the study of EU politics entails. Yet, of course, it is pretty much impossible to get past first base in a foundation level course in politics without entering the elementary, but insoluble, discussion about the boundaries of ...

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