Transnational Politics of the Environment: The European Union and Environmental Policy in Central and Eastern Europe. By Liliana Andonova. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004. 224p. $57.00 cloth, $23.00 paper.

After the collapse of communism at the end of the 1980s, the 10 new emerging democracies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) all sought to accede to the European Union. But to join the EU, applicant countries had first to adopt the vast array of existing EU laws, including a host of tough environmental laws. Some states coped more successfully with regulatory harmonization than did others, so what explains variation in their patterns of national adjustment?