By Dr. Luca Siliquini Cinelli

This book provides the first comparative and multi-disciplinary investigation into what Siliquini Cinelli calls "Europe's tragic statelessness fantas" - a fantasy which is characterized by the progress in the promotion of what the author describes as the "Europeanization of Europe" as the process to create a supra-national entity in which classic forms of law and politics (and thus the Member States) will have an increasingly weaker role. In arguing that the post-modern phase of the "Europeanization of Europe" is the continental paradigm of the doctrine aimed at achieving the formal "depoliticization" and "dejuridification" of the world, Siliquini Cinelli explains why its statelessness fantasy is profoundly linked to the global "(a-)spatial turn" that legal and sociopolitical theories are undergoing. In doing so, he claims that the final goal of this process is to transform the "Europe of trading" into the "˜Europe of rights" while passing through the single market and a monetary economic union (the EU) with common fiscal policies supported by a banking union.

Later, Siliquini Cinelli's comparative and inter-disciplinary approach calls for a thorough reconsideration of this project through an inquiry into (1) the lure of European private law as a particular type of "stateless law"; (2) the several pluralist channels of soft-networked post-national governance that have been promoted in the continent in recent years; and (3) the challenges related to an effective protection of the political order within the EU's boundaries.

The innovative modus investigandi of this book is due to the fact that, starting from an inquiry into the "European private law" project, which is aimed at developing a more coherent â"harmonization" (or "dissolution"?) of national private laws, it identifies the underlying common sources and aims of these three topics, and then explains why academic research has sometimes not progressed satisfactorily despite the vast amount of literature that has been written on them.

In pursuing the suggested roadmap, Siliquini Cinelli claims that both the sovereign and private debt (household and corporate) crises of the euro-zone reveal an a priori (and more profound) political crisis, which seems to confirm the perception that European unification was (and still is) all about economic interests, and that political ideology was (and still is) irrelevant. There is therefore an urgent need for a new discussion of the socio and geopolitical, legal, ontological, and economic dimensions of the "Europeanization of Europe", together with a major update of high-level normative arrangements and theories. Only in this way will it be possible to liberate such concepts as "Europe" and "˜EU" from their instrumentalist confinements, and elaborate on new models of governance capable of providing the EU with the instruments it needs to escape the cage in which it has found itself trapped by also respecting Europe's spontaneously autonomous society, sociology of law, historicity of politics, and logic of memory.

The present work is based, in part, upon Siliquini Cinelli's published works, presented papers, and lectures.

This book will be of particular interest to comparative, private, public, and EU sociopolitical and legal scholars, as well as European policy-makers and practitioners dealing with EU law and policies.

Foreword by Pier Giuseppe Monateri, Professor of Advanced Comparative Law, Sciences-Po, Paris, and of Civil Law and Law and Literature, University of Turin, Italy.

Dr. Luca Siliquini Cinelli is a lecturer at the School of Law, Deakin University, Australia. He received his Ph.D. in Law and Institutions - EU, Comparative and Private Law and LL.B. (magna cum laude) from the University of Turin School of Law, Italy.

In 2013, he was a visiting lecturer at the Centre for Comparative Law in Africa at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa, where he lectured on Foundations of Civil law Tradition within the LL.M. in Comparative Law in Africa. He was a visiting research scholar at UCT's Department of Private Law in 2012 and 2013. Dr. Siliquini Cinelli is a (non-practicing) Barrister - Italy Bar. He is the recipient of the 2013 Avv. Paolo Catalano Award and the 2013 Dott. Gian Luca Innocenti Award for being the top candidate overall at the Bar exam (Court of Appeal of Turin). He is an associate member of the Italian Association of Comparative Law and the Canadian Law and Society Association.

Dr. Siliquini Cinelli is co-author of Danno e Risarcimento (tr. Damage and Compensation; prescribed textbook for Tort law students at several Italian universities, co-written with Pier Giuseppe Monateri and Davide Gianti; Turin: G. Giappichelli Editore, 2013), and author of La responsabilià  Civile del Notaio. Criteri di Configurabilità  e Casistica nel Mercato delle Regole (tr. The Civil Liability of a Notary Public; Alphen aan den Rijn - Milan: Wolters Kluwer - Ipsoa Editore, 2011). He has published in Italian and international law journals and has presented papers at workshops, conferences, seminars, forums, and congress in several universities. Dr. Siliquini Cinelli's main fields of interest are political and legal theory, political theology, EU, comparative, public and private law (contracts and torts), and post-national governance. He also investigates the relationship between law, politics, ontology, sociology, economics, literature, and religion in order to analyze how and why, under the law's beady eye, we do "things" with "words".

June 2014, Paperback 386 pages