Western decline is a bit of a theme in publishing at present. There's Ian Morris's terrific Why the West Rules For Now. Dambisa Moyo wrote How the West Was Lost, which I haven't read (& hasn't been well reviewed). And there are plenty of titles which make it implicit by their focus on the rise of China.

David Marquand's The End of the West has a particular angle revealed by the subtitle: The Once and Future Europe. The European Union and its workings have a special ability to seem unbelievably dull, rather like trade negotiations, even if you think the subject is profoundly important. (The one time I ever laughed at a book about the EU was the Very Short Introduction to it, which revealed the existence of a sub-committee called the 'horizontal working party on drugs'.) So it is a measure of success that David Marquand's book is interesting and highly readable.

That's because it's about the politics, not the institutional mechanics, of the EU. It starts with the post-war political context, and it is always good to be reminded that the directives of today have their origin in the determination of some visionary politicians to ensure there never could be another murderous civil war between Europeans – and the threat to this vision of knitting peace into the fabric of the continent was why the Bosnian war was such a test of EU politicians in the 1990s. Marquand points out that the EU's founders were not visionary dreamers but practical men. But he adds:

“They had an exceptional capacity to see beyond their noses: to imagine a different future and a path toward it.” (p25)

(Readers of my book will know that achieving a long term focus in practical decisions is a current obsession of mine.) Their tactic was to achieve the vision precisely through knitting, stitch by stitch, a practical, sturdy, institutional structure. But Marquand's argument is that this tactic has reached its limit. The EU has become submerged in technocratic practicalities and now the high politics needs to come to the fore. He spends some time describing the disconnect between the elite project of the EU and the imperatives of popular democracy. This disconnect is most apparent in the European Parliament (of which he was once a member), which claims popular legitimacy because there are elections, but in reality turnout is low, popular indifference high, and MEPs are sitting in the First Class carriages of the gravy train.

I don't agree with some of Marquand's specific points but do agree that the questions he raises must be addressed if the massive success of the EU is to be sustained. These include – all too obviously – the mismatch between a single monetary policy, separate fiscal policies and an ill-regulated banking system; the role of religion in the European ideal; the boundaries of Europe, especially in the present 'Arab spring'. Not small questions, then. This book is a good place to start thinking about them without getting bogged down in the acronyms and dull detail of so much that is written about the most important political structure shaping the lives of 300m Europeans.