This book argues that European Union institutional mechanics and the EU as a political unit cannot be properly understood without taking into account the elites that make the policy decisions.

Niilo Kauppi is Research Professor at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the University of Strasbourg.

Mikael Rask Madsen is Professor of European Law and Integration and Director of iCourts - Centre of Excellence for International Courts at the University of Copenhagen.

1. Transnational Power Elites: The New Professionals of Governance, Law and Security, Niilo Kauppi and Mikael Rask Madsen Part I: Governance 2. The Triumph and Despair of Central Banking, Martin Marcussen 3. The Institutionalisation of the European Administrative Corps as a Transnational Elite, Didier Georgakakis 4. European Diplomats: State Nobility and the Invention of a New Social Group, Rebecca Adler-Nissen 5. Elite Transformations and Diffusion in Foreign Policy: A Socio-Historical Approach to the Emergence of European Power Elites, Karen Gram-Skjoldager and Ann-Christina L. Knudsen Part II: Law 6. The Genesis of Europe: Competing Elites and the Emergence of a European Field of Power, Antonin Cohen 7. Elite European lawyers? The Common Market as new Golden Age or Missed Opportunity, Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth Part III: Security 8. The Transnational Field of Computerised Exchange of Information in Police Matters and its European Guilds, Didier Bigo 9. The European Military Elite, Frédéric Mérand and Patrick Barrette Postscript: Understanding Transnational Power Elites, Understanding Europe in the New World Order, Niilo Kauppi and Mikael Rask Madsen