Politics and Culture in Europe

Research programme director:
Prof. Tannelie Blom

Programme profile

Introduction

The research programme Politics and Culture in Europe (PCE) is an interdisciplinary research programme that seeks to understand and explain the process of European integration and its political, institutional, and ideational specifics. The interdisciplinarity PCE aims at attains substance by taking into account the different contexts of this process – historical and cultural contexts as well as the international, if not ‘global’ context of EU policy making.

PCE’s core project: Political and Administrative Challenges for Europe in a Globalizing World

In an attempt to provide a framework for interdisciplinary research and to accommodate the maxim of ‘focus and mass’, PCE has developed a central research project, labelled Political and Administrative Challenges for Europe in a Globalizing World (PACE). Indeed, today’s Europe is facing many challenges. On the one hand it has to adjust its legal, political and social structures to changing global conditions. Here the challenge is to address these pressures while preserving European values and achievements, such as the welfare state, protection of fundamental rights, democratic institutions, and last but not least the European integration processes itself. On the other hand Europe sees itself forced to actively contribute to the development of global regimes concerning for example human rights, economic and financial regulation, and asylum and migration. Only a flexible and effective Europe is able to give shape to the future of its own citizens. Moreover, within Europe, support for European integration seems to be less obvious than before. Historical research reminds us that integration has always been contingent upon contextual factors and that disintegration remains a possibility. Research on Europe and on the EU cannot start any longer from the idea that we have reached a stable institutional equilibrium which only needs to be optimised to address new challenges.

Although Europe (past and present) and in particular the EU and its history are core to the PCE research, PCE’s central research project  explicitly welcomes also research on the bureaucratic embedding of non-EU forms of trans-, supra-, and international organizations and on the political representativeness and responsiveness of policy making by these organizations. After all, what unites PCE researchers is an empirical-analytical, historical, and normative interest in the different forms of ‘governance beyond the nation state’, of which the EU is of course the most developed instance.

PCE’s central research project encompasses three ‘pillars’: Historicizing European union, Politics and Administration beyond the nation state, and Foreign Policy beyond the Nation State. Within the different pillars 3 subprojects can be discerned. Each pillar is coordinated by a senior staff member. Together with Research Programme Director Prof. T. Blom they form the management group.

Pillar One: Historicising European Union
Coordinator: Prof. K. Patel
Thematically speaking Pillar One focuses on Forms of European Cooperation Since the 19th Century. It starts from the observation that innovative forms of governance beyond the nation state can already be found in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century international organisations. The main question here is: What is the place of the EU and its predecessors in the history of cooperation at the inter- and transnational level? Historicising and contextualising European union implies not only an analysis of the predecessors of the EU and the contribution of its member states, but also of transnational actors and alternative forms and forums of cooperation. Approaching European union in these ways opens up new perspectives on topics ranging from the role of European cooperation in global networks and constellations to the place/function of the EU in contemporary politics of European identity.

Pillar Two: Politics and Administration beyond the Nation State
Coordinator: Prof. T. Christiansen
Pillar Two focuses on the political and bureaucratic dimensions of established forms of supra- and international governance. This implies attention both to the transparency, accountability and public responsiveness of supra- and international policy making, and to the role and functions of the bureaucracies in which the different forms of ‘governance beyond the nation state’ are embedded. The research on  supra- and international bureaucracies pays especially attention to the way policy relevant information is accessed, channeled and processed by these bureaucracies (‘politics of information’), and to the way they organize and handle experts and expertise (‘constitutive and operational politics of expertise’). Pillar Two acknowledges in particular the need for comparing the EU’s administrative system with that of other regional or international organisations, with the aim of identifying similarities and differences in the behaviour and performance of trans-, supra-, and international bureaucracies.

Pillar Three: Foreign Policy beyond the Nation State
Coordinator: Prof. S. Vanhoonacker
Pillar Three departs from the observation that the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a multipolar world system have given new impetus to the EU’s international role. It has developed into an important diplomatic actor and crisis manager. Against that background three areas are singled out as being of particular interest: the development of an EU diplomatic system, the more normative and alleged ‘soft power’ aspects of EU foreign politics, and the more material and operational dimensions of EU foreign politics as for example exemplified by civilian and military crisis management missions the EU has undertaken since 2003.

You can access the website of the programme here.