In this book, a team of political scientists makes an impressive attempt to provide a new narrative for European integration. As the lead editors explain in the introduction, contemporary European politics suffers from a lack of solutions in the face of changing socioeconomic problems. The authors also claim that integration theories, which in the past served as a theoretical underpinning to the narrative of an ‘ever closer Union’ bear some of the blame, because they emphasized too strongly the inevitability of integration or, worse, explained the failures of integration as a simple regression or aberration. One of the intentions of this book is discuss ideas for a ‘more resonant Europe’ without the ‘deterministic corset’.

However, how can one talk sensibly about a new narrative for Europe when so many ‘big narratives’ are no longer valid or considered legitimate? By recognizing this challenge, the authors take a different path that sets this volume apart from other attempts to come up with a new European narrative. Instead of inventing a brand new foundational story for Europe, they analyse how political institutions can be recast ‘as a source of agency, as part of the solution rather than as an expression of the problem’. By doing so, the authors take a fresh approach to the very concept of a political narrative. Instead of pursuing a normative‐prescriptive approach or one of historical ‘story‐telling’, they focus on the parallel development of European institutions and theoretical debates. As one of the authors, Sergio Fabbrini, argues, the two main theories of European integration, neo‐functionalism and liberal inter‐governmentalism, need to be overcome for the sake of developing a ‘post‐teleological narrative of a plural Europe’.

The subsequent chapters of book focus on legal elements such as the Court of Justice of the EU (Maribel Gonzales Pascual), law‐based legitimacy (Jan Komarek), mitigation (Agustin Jose Menendes) and institutional elements such as the role of the European Parliament (John Eric Fossum), and European elections (Adriana Ciancio). While representing the bulk of the empirical analysis of the volume, these chapters only very loosely follow up on the initial intentions stated in the introduction. A stronger cross‐referencing between the chapters would have done better justice to all the fascinating thematic insights in this volume.

The book ends with an interesting vision of three possible scenarios for Europe. The author, Renaud Thillaye, sees three alternatives: integration/disintegration, a two‐pillar Europe (of a eurozone core and a non‐euro periphery) and a third scenario of ‘the EU as a platform’. In this scenario, the EU is a bit like Facebook – a user‐friendly interface that allows to its members the flexibility to set up and join some groups while staying away from others. As with Facebook, individual members ‘animate the application by sending messages, sharing best practices, commenting on each other's activities and proposing common projects’. It would be interesting for the author to elaborate this scenario in light of growing public scepticism towards social platforms like Facebook. People appear to be equally averse to artificial intelligence algorithms and Brussels institutions if they do not have an essential sense of ownership and democracy. In this regard, a quest for a ‘post‐teleological narrative of a plural Europe’ remains open.

在这本书中，一个政治科学家团队做出了令人印象深刻的尝试，为欧洲一体化提供了新的叙述。正如主编在导言中解释的那样，面对不断变化的社会经济问题，当代欧洲政治苦于缺乏解决方案。作者还声称，整合理论过去曾作为“更紧密联盟”叙事的理论基础，因此应承担一些责任，因为它们过分强调整合的必然性，或更糟糕的是，它解释了整合的失败。积分作为简单的回归或像差。本书的目的之一是讨论“没有确定性紧身胸衣”的“更具共鸣性的欧洲”的构想。

但是，当这么多“大叙事”不再有效或被认为是合法的时候，人们又该如何明智地谈论一种新的欧洲叙事呢？通过认识到这一挑战，作者们走了一条不同的道路，使这一论断与其他尝试提出新的欧洲叙事的尝试区分开来。他们没有为欧洲发明一个崭新的基础故事，而是分析了如何将政治制度“作为代理机构的源泉，作为解决方案的一部分而不是问题的表达”而被重塑。通过这样做，作者对政治叙事的概念采取了崭新的方法。他们没有采用规范性的说明性方法或历史性的“讲故事”方法，而是将重点放在了欧洲机构与理论辩论的平行发展上。正如其中一位作者塞尔吉奥·法布里尼（Sergio Fabbrini）所说，

本书的后续各章重点讨论法律要素，例如欧盟法院（Maribel Gonzales Pascual），基于法律的合法性（Jan Komarek），缓解（Agustin Jose Menendes）和体制要素，例如欧洲议会的作用（John Eric Fossum）和欧洲大选（Adriana Ciancio）。这些章节虽然代表了大量的实证分析，但仅对导言中所述的最初意图进行了非常宽松的跟进。章节之间更强的交叉引用将使本卷中所有有趣的主题见解都具有更好的公正性。

这本书以对欧洲可能出现的三种情况的有趣观点作为结尾。作者雷诺·蒂拉耶（Renaud Thillaye）提出了三种选择：一体化/解体化，两个支柱的欧洲（欧元区核心国家和一个非欧元区外围国家）以及第三种“以欧盟为平台”的方案。在这种情况下，欧盟有点像Facebook，这是一个用户友好的界面，它使欧盟成员国的成员可以灵活地设置和加入某些团体，而又远离其他团体。与Facebook一样，单个成员“通过发送消息，共享最佳实践，对彼此的活动进行评论并提出共同的项目来使应用程序动起来”。鉴于公众越来越对诸如Facebook之类的社交平台持怀疑态度，对于作者来说，阐述这种情况将是很有趣的。如果人们对人工智能算法和布鲁塞尔机构没有本质的主人翁意识和民主意识，他们似乎同样厌恶。在这方面，对“多元欧洲的后气象学叙事”的追求仍在进行中。