Accounts of the rise of neoliberalism commonly emphasize the exhaustion of postwar systems of embedded liberalism during the economic crises of the 1970s and the parallel internationalization of economic activity. In Europe, the latter process is especially — and controversially — associated with the process of European integration.

Aurélie Dianara Andry’s Social Europe, the Road Not Taken scrutinizes the narratives behind both of these processes. The book traces the debates surrounding a European-level left-wing political project throughout the “long 1970s.” This designation captures the remarkable period of uncertainty and contestation that began with the protest movements of the late 1960s and ended with the effective triumph of a new conservative and neoliberal politics in the early 1980s.

Andry argues that these left policies constituted a coherent alternative to the neoliberal version of European integration that ultimately took shape, but that leaders of the West European left missed a crucial “window of opportunity” to implement them. Her focus on the European Community (EC), the predecessor to the European Union (EU), distinguishes her analysis from those that unfold at the national or global levels.