Money and Power in Europe: The Political Economy of European Monetary Cooperation. By Matthias Kaelberer. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. 254p. $49.50

The puzzle of European monetary cooperation—namely, why sovereign nation-states would relinquish monetary autonomy in return for some measure of exchange rate stability—has produced a growing body of highly informed and theoretically strong works on European integration. Matthais Kaelberer's account fits nicely into this mold. The author argues convincingly that European monetary cooperation—especially Germany's leading contribution to the European Monetary Union (EMU)—is the result of a structural conflict of interest between weak and strong currency countries over the rules of monetary cooperation. In laying out his “structural” argument, Kaelberer's analysis, as he notes in his own words, “complements rather than substitutes for other explanations of European monetary cooperation” (p. 6). In making this claim, his work will not settle the extremely lively theoretical debate on European integration, and European monetary cooperation more specifically. However, it is an important contribution to the literature and fills in some of the theoretical void involving concepts of “leadership” and “asymmetry” of power that help explain European integration.