ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the problem of the British state and European integration from the perspective of global Fordism and its emerging crisis. It expresses that the parameters for action by European political elites were fundamentally changed by the shift from Fordism to flexible accumulation. The chapter focuses on the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty. The second wave of European integration may be considered to be initiated by the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty. From the broader perspective of political modernisation, the economic project of the European Union connects to the establishment of a European civil society. European integration has unleashed new forms of political modernisation that are evidently in tension with both a deregulated global economy and continued domination of the nation-state. In Europe, globalisation has to be viewed through the prism of political Europeanisation. The process of European integration suggests the development of a market economy embedded within a problematic political society.
