Review of Michael A. Wilkinson’s Authoritarian Liberalism and the Transformation of Modern Europe. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021, xvi + 335 pp.

This book characterizes the EU in more than one way. The EU allegedly exemplifies inter alia economic constitutionalism, benign despotism, welfare corporatism, executive federalism, technocratic managerialism, and authoritarian populism. This might suggest that the author prioritizes flowery description over analytical precision. Not so, as the central claim that the EU should first and foremost be characterized by the first two words of the title, ‘ authoritarian liberalism ’ , remains clear throughout. As such, the argument has two components. First, the name of the game in the EU — and previously in the European Economic Community — is liber-alism. Second, this liberalism is authoritarian. Wilkinson’s aim is to “open the space to develop critical theories of European integration, not as some form of external constraint, or experiment gone awry” (viii), but as a project destined to become what the title of the book claims it is. He contrasts himself with academics who view the EU as a ‘ sacred object ’ that is not without flaws but also not inherently authoritarian. The book develops the argument in four parts. In the first part, Inter-war, the inherent tension in interwar liberalism — that is, how to reconcile political equality with economic