Bulletin n. 3/2011
February 2012
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Zimmermann Ann, Favell Adrian
    Governmentality, political field or public sphere? Theoretical alternatives in the political sociology of the EU
    in European Journal of Social Theory , Volume 14, Number 4, November 2011 ,  2011 ,  488-515
    The call for a more sociological approach to the study of the European Union, reflected in a number of recent survey works by sociologists and political scientists, offers exciting new prospects for rethinking the empirical terrain of ‘Europeanized’ politics beyond the nation state – whether in terms of governance, policy-making, parliamentary and legal politics, mobilization, or political communication. Via a survey of three kinds of leading sociological work on the EU, broadly split between three camps working with the distinctive legacies of ‘Habermasian’, ‘Bourdieusian’ and ‘Foucauldian’ thinking, this article details the strengths and weaknesses of these paradigms. Focusing on a number of exemplary studies on the question of democratic legitimacy in the EU using each of these approaches, it offers a preliminary attempt to map their agendas, contributions, and blind spots, moving towards a synthesis that might identify commonalities and streamline a more coherent agenda for the political sociology of the European Union. The most promising line would appear to be one that moves away from purely theoretical/conceptual debates towards specific operationalizations able to combine elements of the various sociological approaches.
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