Centre d'études Européennes de Sciences Po

Controversies over such issues as nuclear waste, genetically modified organisms, asbestos, tobacco, gene therapy, avian flu, and cell phone towers arise almost daily as rapid scientific and technological advances create uncertainty and bring about unforeseen concerns. The authors of Acting in an Uncertain World argue that political institutions must be expanded and improved to manage these controversies, to transform them into productive conversations, and to bring about "technical democracy." They show how "hybrid forums"—in which experts, non-experts, ordinary citizens, and politicians come together—reveal the limits of traditional delegative democracies, in which decisions are made by quasi-professional politicians and techno-scientific information is the domain of specialists in laboratories. The division between professionals and laypeople, the authors claim, is simply outmoded.\n\nThe authors argue that laboratory research should be complemented by everyday experimentation pursued in the real world, and they describe various modes of cooperation between the two. They explore a range of concrete examples of hybrid forums that have dealt with sociotechnical controversies including nuclear waste disposal in France, industrial waste and birth defects in Japan, a childhood leukemia cluster in Woburn, Massachusetts, and Mad Cow Disease in the United Kingdom. They discuss the implications for political decision making in general, and they describe a "dialogic" democracy that enriches traditional representative democracy. To invent new procedures for consultation and representation, they suggest, is to contribute to an endless process that is necessary for the ongoing democratization of democracy.\n

Since the late 1990s, new strategies concerning the role and shape of welfare states have been formulated, many of which are guided by a logic of social investment. This book maps out this new perspective and assesses both its achievements and shortcomings. In doing so, it provides a critical analysis of social investment ideas and policies and opens up for discussion many of Europe’s most pressing concerns—such as an aging population, the current economic crisis, and environmental issues— and whether social investment can provide adequate responses to these challenges. (Résumé éditeur)

In order to contextualise the papers in this special issue, this paper presents an overview and framework for understanding the importance of East–West migration in Europe associated with the EU enlargement process. The new patterns and forms of migration seen among East European migrants in the West—in terms of circular and temporary free movement, informal labour market incorporation, cultures of migration, transnational networks, and other phenomena documented in the following papers—illustrate the emergence of a new migration system in Europe. Textbook narratives, in terms of standard accounts of immigration, integration and citizenship based on models of post-colonial, guestworker and asylum migration, will need to be rethought. One particularly fertile source for this is the large body of theory and research developed in the study of Mexican–US migration, itself a part of a regional integration process of comparative relevance to the new European context. While the benefits of open migration from the East will likely triumph over populist political hostility, it is a system that may encourage an exploitative dual labour market for Eastern movers working in the West, as well as encouraging a more effective racial or ethnically-based closure to immigrants from South of the Mediterranean and further afield.

European cities are on the rise, and are taking advantage of the opportunities of the European integration and globalization processes. But they also face economic changes, social inequalities, poverty, and a new set of constraints. Taking examples through the European Union, this book explores the impact of the transformation of the nation states on cities and the change of local societies and local governments. It argues that new modes of urban governance are emerging, and that cities are becoming collective actors within European governance. It shows why and how the bulk of European cities still appear to be original forms of compromise, aggregation, representation of diverse interests, and culture. Different modes of governance are gradually being structured in most middle-sized European cities despite processes of social exclusion segregation accompanied by the increased mobility of some citizens. Are Europeans going to invent a new form of institutionalized and territorialized capitalism, of which medium-sized European cities will be one of the pillars and one of the actors? Failing that, the effects of changing scales could be expressed as profound transformations of the European urban model.

Advanced welfare states seem remarkably stable at fi rst glance. Although most member states of the European Union (EU) have undertaken comprehensive welfare reform, especially since the 1990s, much comparative welfare state analysis portrays a 'frozen welfare landscape' . Social spending is stable. However, if we interpret the welfare state as more than aggregate social spending and look at long-term trends, we can see profound transformations across several policy areas, ranging from labor market policy and regulation, industrial relations, social protection, social services like child care and education, pensions, and long-term care. Th is series is about trajectories of change. Have there been path-breaking welfare innovations or simply attempts at political reconsolidation? What new policies have been added, and with what consequences for competitiveness, employment, income equality and poverty, gender relations, human capital formation, and fi scal sustainability? What is the role of the European Union in shaping national welfare state reform? Are advanced welfare states moving in a similar or even convergent direction, or are they embarking on ever more divergent trajectories of change? Th ese issues raise fundamental questions about the politics of reform. If policy-makers do engage in major reforms (despite the numerous institutional, political and policy obstacles), what factors enable them to do so? While the overriding objective of the series is to trace trajectories of contemporary welfare state reform, the editors also invite the submission of manuscripts which focus on theorizing institutional change in the social policy arena.

We synthesize the literature on the recent rise of populism. First, we discuss definitions and present descriptive evidence on the recent increase in support for populists. Second, we cover the historical evolution of populist regimes since the late nineteenth century. Third, we discuss the role of secular economic factors related to cross-border trade and automation. Fourth, we review studies on the role of the 2008–09 global financial crisis and subsequent austerity, connect them to historical work covering the Great Depression, and discuss likely mechanisms. Fifth, we discuss studies on identity politics, trust, and cultural backlash. Sixth, we discuss economic and cultural consequences of growth in immigration and the recent refugee crisis. We also discuss the gap between perceptions and reality regarding immigration. Seventh, we review studies on the impact of the internet and social media. Eighth, we discuss the literature on the implications of populism’s recent rise. We conclude outlining avenues for further research. (JEL D72, E32, G01, J15, N30, N40, Z13)

Depuis les années 1960, les problèmes d’organisation, de contrôle et de financement des systèmes administratifs constituent des enjeux collectifs majeurs dans les démocraties occidentales. Ils alimentent les diagnostics de crise des bureaucraties et favorisent l’essor de réformes préconisant de nouveaux modes de fonctionnement, souvent inspirés du New Public Management. En dépit de l’importance historique de l’État, la France n’échappe pas à ces changements. L’administration est l’objet de nombreuses critiques et de réformes. Comment, pourquoi et avec quels effets les élites françaises ont-elles développé, à grand renfort de publicité, des politiques de réforme de l’État destinées à transformer les règles historiques du système administratif patiemment mises en œuvre depuis le début du XIXe siècle ? Voilà la question centrale que pose cet ouvrage. Il analyse les réformes de l’administration française du début des années 1960 jusqu’à la présidence Sarkozy. Avec la perspective d’une sociologie historique de l’État, il retrace l’essor et le développement de ces réformes sous la Ve République et analyse les multiples configurations d’acteurs qui y participent : personnels politiques, hauts fonctionnaires, ministères, experts patentés, citoyens… Il donne à comprendre le tournant néomanagérial de l’administration française, ses limites et la spécificité des voies du changement dans le contexte hexagonal. Soulignant la singularité de la préoccupation des gouvernants pour l’organisation et la transparence de la machinerie administrative, l’auteur diagnostique finalement l’émergence d’une nouvelle rationalité politique marquée par l’impératif du « souci de soi de l’État ».

A comprehensive comparative study of the distinct ideas and political arguments that have shaped French and British policies towards their ethnic minorities, and the effects of these intellectual frameworks at local, national and European levels. The author sets out the divergent conceptualisations of citizenship, nationality, pluralism, autonomy, public order and tolerance that make up the national "philosophies" in the two countries--republican integration in France and multicultural race relations in Britain. This new paperback edition contains a new preface bringing the volume up-to-date in the light of new legislation and progress.

Abstract For two decades, the share of trade in inputs, also called vertical trade, has been dramatically increasing. In reallocating trade flows to their original input‐producing industries and countries, this paper suggests a new measure of international trade: ‘value‐added trade’ and makes it possible to answer the question ‘who produces for whom?’ In 2004, 27% of international trade was vertical trade. The industrial and geographic patterns of value‐added trade are very different from those of standard trade. Value‐added trade is relatively less important in regional trade but the difference is not more important for Asia than for America.

This article maps the methodological debate on process tracing and discusses the diverse variants of process tracing in order to highlight the commonalities beyond diversity and disagreements. Today most authors agree that process tracing is aimed at unpacking causal and temporal mechanisms. The article distinguishes two main types of use for process tracing. Some are more inductive, aimed at theory building (i.e. at uncovering and specifying causal mechanisms) while others are more deductive, aimed at theory testing (and refining). The paper summarizes the main added value and drawbacks of process tracing. It ends by providing ten guidelines for when and how to apply process tracing.

Abstract This article examines the contribution of the activities of FRONTEX, the Agency in charge of managing operational cooperation at the external borders of the European Union (EU), to the securitisation of asylum and migration in the EU. It does so by applying a sociological approach to the study of securitisation processes, which, it argues, is particularly well-suited to the study of securitisation processes in the EU. Such an approach privileges the study of securitising practices over securitising ‘speech acts’ in securitisation processes. After identifying two main types of securitising practices in general, the article systematically examines the activities of FRONTEX and the extent to which they can be seen as securitising practices on the basis of these two (non-mutually exclusive) criteria. The article shows that all the main activities of FRONTEX can be considered to be securitising practices. The article therefore concludes that the activities of FRONTEX contribute to a significant extent to the ongoing securitisation of asylum and migration in the EU. It also highlights that this does not automatically make FRONTEX a significant securitising actor in its own right and that more research is needed on the relations between FRONTEX and the EU institutions, especially in the light of the current negotiations aiming to amend the founding Regulation of FRONTEX.

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To what extent are new generations ‘Thatcherite’? Using British Social Attitudes data for 1985–2012 and applying age-period-cohort analysis and generalized additive models, this article investigates whether Thatcher’s Children hold more right-authoritarian political values compared to other political generations. The study further examines the extent to which the generation that came of age under New Labour – Blair’s Babies – shares these values. The findings for generation effects indicate that the later political generation is even more right-authoritarian, including with respect to attitudes to redistribution, welfare and crime. This view is supported by evidence of cohort effects. These results show that the legacy of Thatcherism for left-right and libertarian-authoritarian values is its long-term shaping of public opinion through political socialization.

Comment s'organise l'action collective ? Comment les acteurs coopèrent-ils ? La recherche en sciences sociales a donné des réponses très diverses à ces questions. Cet ouvrage propose de centrer l'attention sur les aspects concrets et sur les supports matériels de l'action collective : les instruments, les outils et les dispositifs tels qu’ils sont aujourd’hui mobilisés pour analyser les marchés, le capitalisme, les entreprises et différentes formes d’action collective liées à l’autorité publique. Dix ans après la parution de Gouverner par les instruments, ce nouvel opus dresse un bilan des débats et des controverses sur l’instrumentation en dialoguant avec d’autres champs d’études (sciences de gestion, histoire et économie) et discute la notion d’instrumentation à partir de travaux récents portant sur le climat, les services environnementaux,les droits de propriété, la dette publique, les journées mémorielles, la gestion des squats, etc. Une richesse des débats qui confirme le caractère fécond de la réflexion sur l’instrumentation pour penser les sciences sociales et l’action collective aujourd’hui.

Résumé Les travaux à partir des notions « d’instrument d’action publique » ou de « technologies de gouvernement » ont connu ces dernières années une forte recrudescence dans l’espace francophone. Ils s’appuient sur une tradition anglo-saxonne de plus de quarante années et aujourd’hui très diversifiée, mais ils l’ont enrichi de différents apports allant des théories du pouvoir à la sociologie des sciences. L’article présente ainsi un panorama de la littérature en mettent en valeur la diversité des perspectives qui coexistent et leur évolutions. L’approche par les instruments est un bon traceur de changement de l’action publique, mais aussi des régimes et des styles politiques. Elle incite aussi à saisir l’action publique dans sa matérialité. Comprendre l’instrumentation est une façon de saisir les transformations de l’État en envisageant ses pratiques, et les recompositions qu’elles connaissent, en particulier dans la tension permanente entre contrainte et incitation.

This paper seeks to recover and establish the distinct (and distinctly) institutionalist social ontology that underpins social constructivism as an approach to political economic analysis. It views social constructivism as a profoundly normative mode of political inquiry which seeks to discern, interrogate and elucidate the contingency of social, political and economic change – restoring politics (broadly understood) to processes and practices typically seen to be inevitable, necessary and non-negotiable. More controversially, perhaps, it also sees social constructivism, after both Berger and Luckmann and Searle, as ontologically institutionalist. Social constructivism, it is argued, has its origins in the attempt to establish the ontological distinctiveness of institutions as ‘social’ (as distinct from natural or ‘brute’) facts. This leads it to a distinct understanding of the relationship between actors and the environment (both natural and social) in which they find themselves and to its characteristic emphasis on the ideational mediation of that relationship. That in turn leads it to a particular type of analytic purchase on political economic realities, reflected in its distinctive emphasis on interpretive ambiguity, the social construction of political and economic imperatives and on disequilibrium. The argument is illustrated and developed further through an elucidation of the implications of such a social constructivism for the analysis of the period of crisis through which we now acknowledge ourselves to be living.

Barrie et al., (2021). academictwitteR: an R package to access the Twitter Academic Research Product Track v2 API endpoint. Journal of Open Source Software, 6(62), 3272, https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.03272

Abstract Classical views of European integration have been shaken by the evolution of the past decade. It has become clear that the traditional division of tasks between the European Union and its Member States, and between the various European institutions no longer provides a valid description of European policy making. As the EU has become a major actor in the field of risk regulation, new institutional and other actors such as scientific experts and transnational bureaucratic networks increasingly play a major role. This book considers the underlying forces that have brought about such change and critically analyses the responses of the European institutions. Various chapters explore the constitutional and the administrative law dimensions of the developing European market governance, and they consider the changes that have occurred from the perspective of both legal and social theory.

The European Commission’s Investment Plan for Europe and the enduring economic crisis has brought state-owned development banks again to the fore of public and scholarly debate in Europe. This article proposes to place these banks’ activities and recent institutional co-operation in the context of European integration and assumes a historical perspective on European economic governance and development banking. Most importantly, it argues that the European Investment Bank has become a centre of gravity in long-standing political attempts to increase the investment firepower of the European Union. Based on detailed process-tracing analysis through publicly available data and interview material, the article delineates a gradual process of institutional innovation and network formation that advanced since the late 1980s and culminated in recent post-crisis policy processes. The contemporary visibility of development banking in Europe, we conclude, follows from these and is representative of a nucleus for a – somewhat hidden – European investment state, whose reach and stability, however, is yet to be determined.

The study of public policy instruments in national settings has contributed significantly to our understanding of policy, political systems, and relations between state and citizen. Its promise for the EU, where instrument-centred research has hitherto been limited in coverage and method, remains by contrast largely unfulfilled. This article discusses the political sociology approach to instruments, developed by Lascoumes and Le Galès as an alternative to the traditional functionalist perspective, and highlights its value in opening new perspectives on EU policy-making and its consequences. It presents an overview of the findings of an original set of case studies, which demonstrate the usefulness of the approach in providing new insights on classic questions of EU decision-making, uncovering hidden dimensions of EU policy development, and revealing the limits of the organisational capacity of the EU as a system, as well as challenging established narratives.