Andrew Moravcsik. The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. x + 514 pp. $22.50, paper, ISBN 978-0-8014-8509-1. Reviewed by Todd Alan Good Published on H-Diplo (September, 2000) Accounts of European integration consistently have combined historical narrative with interna‐ tional relations theory. Among the most signifi‐ cant contributions to this issue are the works by Walter Lipgens and Alan Milward, who advanced contradictory theories of European integration while focusing upon the period from 1945 to 1955 and the Treaty of Rome era, respectively. In his numerous works, Lipgens contends that federal structures were the product of a widespread be‐ lief that the creation of supranational organiza‐ tions would prevent further war among Western European states. Furthermore, supranational or‐ ganizations perpetuated the process of "spillover," once the integration process had begun, it became a self-sustaining process, from the creation of NATO to the EEC to the creation of the Single Eu‐ rope Act of 1986. Thus, the creation of numerous supranational "European" institutions with vari‐ ous mandates and members ("variable geometry") would further cooperation among European states, and lessen the chances for future conflict. In many respects, Milward successfully rebuffed this theoretical explanation in his 1992 work The European Rescue of the Nation-State. Milward ar‐ gues that integration was only implemented when needed (rebutting the argument that there was "spillover" from one institution to another) and that cooperation was a way to increase, not de‐ crease, state power. According to Milward, Euro‐ pean states realized they needed international so‐ lutions to economic and security problems in the 1950s--hence the creation of the European Eco‐ nomic Community and Euratom in 1957.[1] A recent challenge to Milward's theory comes from Andrew Moravcsik, an Associate Professor of Government at Harvard University. Moravcsik's 1998 work, The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose & State Power from Messina to Maastricht, is am‐ bitious in scope and content. Moravcsik extends his analysis far beyond the events examined by Lipgens and Milward to embrace the five key mo‐ ments in "building" Europe from the creation of the EEC in 1957 with the Treaties of Rome to the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 which set the stage for monetary integration and further federalist coop‐ eration. Additionally, Moravcsik has written a work that speaks to both historians and political scientists; it integrates a theoretical discussion