Restructuring Europe

Stefano Bartolini traces how the borders and functional limits of the European nation state were shaped over time, and how those limits are now being crossed, reworked, and moved. In his account, European integration is not simply a set of treaties layered on top of existing states but a force that changes what those states fundamentally are.

The study centres on three linked questions: how the institutions of the emerging government centre in Brussels are designed, how the political decisions made there redraw the boundaries that matter, and what those redrawn boundaries mean for long-established and newly forming political structures across Europe.

Bartolini frames integration as a new historical stage. Where Europe spent roughly five centuries separating into distinct national systems, the present era moves in the opposite direction, pushing law, economies, and culture toward greater uniformity across the continent.