-Toward-a-Reflexive-Political-Sociology-of-the-European-Union-Fields-Intell

Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology
Toward a Reflexive
Political Sociology of
the European Union
Fields, Intellectuals and Politicians
Niilo Kauppi
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology
Series Editors
Carlo Ruzza
Department of Sociology and Social Research
University of Trento
Italy
Hans-Jörg Trenz
Department of Media, Cognition and Communication
University of Copenhagen
Denmark
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology addresses contemporary
themes in the field of Political Sociology. Over recent years, attention has
turned increasingly to processes of Europeanization and globalization
and the social and political spaces that are opened by them. These processes comprise both institutional-constitutional change and new dynamics of social transnationalism. Europeanization and globalization are also
about changing power relations as they affect people’s lives, social networks and forms of mobility. The Palgrave Studies in European Political
Sociology series addresses linkages between regulation, institution building and the full range of societal repercussions at local, regional, national,
European and global level, and will sharpen understanding of changing
patterns of attitudes and behaviours of individuals and groups, the political use of new rights and opportunities by citizens, new conflict lines and
coalitions, societal interactions and networking, and shifting loyalties
and solidarity within and across the European space.
We welcome proposals from across the spectrum of Political Sociology
and Political Science, on dimensions of citizenship; political attitudes
and values; political communication and public spheres; states, communities, governance structure and political institutions; forms of political
participation; populism and the radical right; and democracy and
democratization.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14630
Niilo Kauppi
Toward a Reflexive
Political Sociology of
the European Union
Fields, Intellectuals and Politicians
Niilo Kauppi
University of Jyväskylä/Academy of Finland
and French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)
Helsinki, Finland
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology
ISBN 978-3-319-71001-3 ISBN 978-3-319-71002-0
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71002-0
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In memory of Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002)
Acknowledgments
This selection of writings continues what I have been doing since my
PhD: that is, to work with some of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s
ideas, enriching them with other ideas from several disciplines, to explore
the social and cultural underpinnings of political power in the European
context. My perspective has been that of a reflexive contextual analysis of
social action. Reflexivity involves a variable analysis of one’s own approach.
It also involves a critique of established practices and power. I think these
critical elements are the forgotten but enduring aspects of Bourdieu’s
work. Unfortunately, today there is too much superficial conceptual
appropriation that misses the underlying ideas. The global diffusion of
concepts like ‘field’ or ‘habitus’ has meant that concepts and ideas have
been dissociated from one another. The mechanical use of concepts without content has replaced Bourdieu’s iconoclasm. The purpose here is to
focus on ideas such as the critical analysis of contextual political action
and the sociogenesis of political power. However, this critical perspective
requires pushing the analysis forward to explore political action as well as
to objectify Bourdieu’s approach, something he attempted himself in different ways (see for instance Bourdieu 1988, 2004).
This is a very personal collection that inevitably arrives yet again at an
analysis of my relationship with Bourdieu. While I still consider myself a
Bourdieusian scholar, I have drawn inspiration from a variety of sources
in political science, IR, sociology, philosophy and linguistics. Bourdieu
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Acknowledgments
and I had our differences. The most important one had to do with the
interpretation of the purpose of scholarly work. After my PhD with
Bourdieu in 1991 on French intellectual and political radicalism, I spent
several years at Indiana University (Bloomington) working on linguistics
and semiotics before shifting focus to political science and European
integration at the University of Helsinki. During this time, I kept contact
with Bourdieu and always received encouraging feedback for my ongoing
work. That is, until I published French Intellectual Nobility in 1996.
Bourdieu thought I had sided with the enemy. Why? I had taken distance
from his approach by analyzing it as a position in and product of the
French intellectual field. For me, this was a way to develop my own
research. Despite this disagreement, I published a book which is a reflexive analysis of the concept of habitus (Kauppi 2000). At this point, I was
invited to take part in a seminar organized in Bourdieu’s honor at Cérisy-­
la-­Salle in July 2001 (see Chap. 14). But I had firmly decided to continue
working on my own research perspective.
*
*
*
Although I as the author carry solely the responsibility for what is published here, this adventure would not have been possible without a little
help from a number of friends and colleagues. I am particularly grateful
to Kari Palonen, who has played, in different ways, an important role
since the 1980s in my intellectual explorations. A legendary Weberologist
and academic figure on the European social science scene, Kari, although
now retired, continues to publish and take part in academic seminars and
conferences. Thank you also to another intellectual companion David
Swartz, with whom I have been developing European political sociology
in the ECPR since the beginning of the 2000s, for stimulating discussions. My warmest thanks to Rebecca Adler-Nissen, Pertti Ahonen,
Stefan Bernhardt, Erkki Berndtson, Ioana Cîrstocea, Jean-Pascal Daloz,
Tero Erkkilä, Adrian Favell, Virginie Guiraudon, Taru Haapala, Ilkka
Heiskanen, Sakari Hänninen, Herbert Kalthoff, Niels Lachmann, Mikael
Rask-Madsen, Brigitte Mahuzier, Juan Diez Medrano, Hélène Michel,
Frédéric Mérand, Tuomo Mörä, Jon Nixon, Semi Purhonen, J-P Roos,
Acknowledgments
ix
Juri Mykkänen, Kari Paakkunainen, Inka Salovaara-Moring, Christian
Schmidt-Wellenburg, Sanna Valtonen and Claudia Wiesner for support
and encouragement at various stages.
I would like to thank the publishers and journals for the permission to
reuse in this volume previous versions of these pieces.
Chapter 1: Published in Adrian Favell and Virginie Guiraudon (eds.)
The Sociology of the EU, 2011, 150–171, Palgrave.
Chapter 2: Published in Comparative European Politics, 8/1/2010,
19–36, Palgrave.
Chapter 3: Published in Rebecca Adler-Nissen (ed.) Bourdieu in
International Relations, 2012, 193–206, Routledge.
Chapter 8: Published in Linda Evans and Jon Nixon (eds.) Academic
Identities and the European Academic Landscape, 2015, 31–46. Bloomsbury.
Chapter 9: Published in Tero Erkkilä (ed.) Global University Rankings,
2013, 166–177, Palgrave.
Chapter 10. Published in International Political Sociology, 8/3/2014,
330–32, Wiley.
Thank you to Palgrave’s Sharla Plant, Dhanalakshmi Jayavel and Jack
Redden for help in the production of this volume, to the anonymous
reviewer for excellent comments, to Carlo Ruzza and Hans-Jörg Trenz for
accepting this manuscript into their series and to Oili Pulkkinen for helping me put these texts in a single format. A special thank you goes to
Stefan Sjöblom and Kim Zilliacus who generously offered me office space
at the Swedish School of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. As
always, I am extremely grateful to my wife and best friend Anne Epstein,
and our children Oona and Caius, who have been a constant source of
support during all these years in France, the USA and Finland.
December 2017
Helsinki
Contents
Part I
The Politics of Transnational Integration
1
1Toward a Sociology of EU Politics 3
2Exploring the Political Ontology of European Integration 25
3Analyzing Integration 49
4Constructing Transnational Fields 69
5Political Legitimation and European Public Spaces:
Communication as Practice and Resource 89
6Processes of Differentiation of Political Power in the EU 107
Part II Reflexive Action and Knowledge Production
117
7Intellectual Power in Europe 119
xi
xii
Contents
8European Academic Identity 131
9European Political Science and Global Knowledge 149
10Academics as Politicians and as Operators of Global
Governance 165
Part III
Bourdieusian Meditations
177
11Translation and the Politics of Circulating Ideas 179
12The Secondary Reality of the Media 191
13Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Politics: An Interpretation 197
14The Bourdieu Affair 219
15Toward a Political Theory of the Sublime 229
Epilogue: Tinkering with the Future of the EU 239
Bibliography 247
Index 265
Introduction
This selection of writings deals with processes of differentiation and social
action in European politics. The basic argument is that in European politics today, new forms of transnational power are being created that challenge the traditional parameters of action of the nation-state. In these
texts, I try to capture the evolving dynamics of transnational spaces,
groups and knowledge. Established and new agents create new spaces of
action, such as European public policies in areas like higher education
and research and transnational institutions like the European Parliament
as well as new types of knowledge and new political practices tied to these
spaces. Politics and knowledge are coproduced by a variety of actors,
including politicians, civil servants, journalists, intellectuals and academics. In parallel with a political Europe that emerges around public policies
and transnational institutions, politicians, civil servants and academics
have produced a Europe of knowledge that aims to create European science through similar reforms and institutional blueprints in European
nation-states. These processes of field differentiation are highly complicated and the texts that follow will only be able to give a glimpse of these
developments. Fields as spaces for social action span a variety of institutional complexes and are subject to a variety of temporalities. These studies provide a perspective that focuses on the positional spaces, strategies
and resources of social groups such as academics, intellectuals and politicians like Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). This approach
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Introduction
stems from a critique of more established approaches in the literature like
constructivism and institutionalism that reify or anthropomorphize institutions and fail to analyze political action in terms of resources or capital.
From this perspective, culture and education are interesting not as codes,
narratives or tool boxes but as sources of power.
In this introduction, I will first discuss some of the principles involved
in a structural constructivist approach to EU politics and then present
the structure of the book.
ey Features of the Structural
K
Constructivist Approach
Some scholars (Ansart 1990) have labeled Pierre Bourdieu’s approach
as structural constructivism or constructivist structuralism. These two
terms, often used interchangeably, operate in two different registers.
The first one, structural constructivism, emphasizes the links with other
constructivist trends in sociology, political science and the study of
international relations (see Kauppi 2005). The main difference between
these and Bourdieu’s work is the definition of social structures.
Sociology defines the structure of society as composed of institutionalized patterns of interaction (see for instance Berger and Luckmann
1966). Many scholars in international relations understand structure to
mean culture or values (Wendt 1999). In contrast to these, Bourdieu’s
definition of structure is linguistic. The structure has two parts, for
example A and B (good / bad, day / night, dominated by / managed,
cultural / economic ...). This division manifests itself in different forms
and at all levels of society. Structural equivalence indicates that in the
two pairs AB and CD, for example, the terms A and C, and B and D,
are in similar positions. For instance, A and C may be the dominant
players in two separate fields and B and D the dominated players in
these same fields.
The second concept, constructivist structuralism, emphasizes the similarities between Bourdieu and French structuralism (for analysis see
Kauppi 1996a). The concept emphasizes the similarities between very
Introduction
xv
different kinds of works that apply the structuralist conception of ­structure.
Works range from linguistics (Saussure, Trubetskoy, Jakobson), philosophy (Derrida, Foucault), to literary studies (Barthes, Goldman) and psychoanalysis (Lacan, Pontalis). The main difference between Bourdieu and
for instance the main developer of structuralism, Claude Lévi-­Strauss, is
that Bourdieu added to the analysis of structures that of action and power.
Structural constructivism/constructivist structuralism examines reality as
a product of human activity, as a symbolic and material construction. I
use the term structural constructivism in this context because it emphasizes those features that are essential for political sociology. I will combine
these features to broader social scientific discussions outside France.
Bourdieu can be considered as the main developer of structural constructivism. In the 1960s and 1970s, his close colleagues Luc Boltanski
(1973, 1982), Jean-Claude Chamboredon, Jean-Claude Passeron and
Monique de Saint Martin also took part in the development of this
perspective through empirical work relating to the French system of
higher education, among other themes. In France, Bourdieu’s influence
spread beyond sociology from the 1970s onward via the works of scholars who had attended his seminars. Naming a few will give the reader a
sense of the breadth of this influence. Jacques Dubois (2000), Joseph
Jurt (1995) and Gisèle Sapiro (1999) applied the concepts of structural
constructivism to the study of French literature. Some French historians
used some of his key concepts in the study of the role of the writer and
intellectual history (Viala 1985; Charle 1990). In political science,
some scholars (Gaxie 1978; Offerlé 1999) studied the professionalization of politics in France and in the European Union (see for instance
Kauppi 1996b). In communication studies, work has been done on
French journalism (for instance Champagne 1991; Neveu 2009) and on
the French intellectual field and its relationships with civil society and
its power structures (Pinto 1984; Kauppi 1994, 1996a). Since the
1980s, Bourdieu’s influence has gone global (cf. Kauppi and Swartz
2015; Medvetz and Sallaz 2018).
For the purposes of this study, the strengths and weaknesses of
Bourdieu’s structural constructivist approach to political sociology need
to be discussed (see Chap. 13 for a deeper analysis).
xvi
Introduction
On Political Action
Although the importance of symbolic action is undeniable to Bourdieu’s
analysis of social life, it does not get a central role in his political theory.
In fact, symbolic action and the role of civil society as an intermediary
between the individual and the state play only minor roles. In his early
works, Bourdieu interprets rather straightforwardly the role of mediation
and transmission. In Bourdieu’s Platonic interpretation, politics is just
about the symbolic, in the pejorative sense of the term, and it only reflects
à la Marx more fundamental economic and social processes. On the one
hand, reality is renewed through symbolic action; on the other hand,
fundamental economic and social processes are independent of the symbolic. Social reality should then be analyzed through a kind of dual ontology, in which a part of reality only reflects more fundamental phenomena,
a kind of ‘Ur-reality’. This approach minimizes the transformative power
of politics and political action. Perhaps for this reason, Bourdieu’s theory
has been accused on several occasions of determinism.
Bourdieu’s theory of politics is divided into two parts: the analysis of
social domination and of the political field. Following Weber, symbolic
violence—or the imposition of a cultural code—is the basic principle of
operation through which society’s dominated groups unconsciously
reproduce social domination. They have to participate in this domination
for it to be legitimate. The reproduction of social domination takes place
with the consent of the dominated. Although, theoretically speaking,
symbolic violence could be distinguished from acts carried out on a voluntary basis, in practice it is difficult to distinguish the two. Symbolic
violence can be compared to physical violence, which was famously
defined by Weber as a state monopoly. But in contrast to Weber and also
Michel Foucault (1980), Bourdieu does not analyze physical violence,
which has traditionally been considered in the form of the public control
of private violence as a key element in the emergence of the modern state
(see Chap. 15). Bourdieu seems to be saying that the state is in possession
of the monopoly of physical as well as symbolic violence. However, these
differences are so significant that it is questionable to say that one institution controls symbolic violence like it does physical violence. Civil ­society,
Introduction
xvii
in the broad sense, and religion, among other institutions, participate in
the creation and maintenance of symbolic violence.
The ultimate target of political activity is knowledge of the social world
and the struggle for the legitimate definition of reality (politics of knowledge). But the political value of an idea or information is dependent more
on its capacity to be universalized than on its truth value. It depends on
its ability to mobilize. Echoing French social philosopher Alfred Fouillée,
Bourdieu defines political ideas as power ideas (idées-forces). Power ideas
like ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ cannot be shown to be true or false. The only
way political opponents can resist them is by setting against them alternative power ideas. The ability to mobilize correlates with the power idea’s
cognitive and social status, whether it is widely accepted or not. If the
political community accepts it as a fact, it is no longer fought over. It will
form part of the legitimate definition of reality on the basis of which
social struggles will continue. A lot is ‘decided’ at this ‘metapolitical’ level
(see Chap. 2 for analysis). Education is a key guiding social mechanism
shaping reality. More broadly, although Bourdieu does not develop this
aspect, political culture in the form of civic culture forms the rarely questioned deep level of political life.
Bourdieu’s analysis of social domination stresses the role of the social
field (champ social) in defining political struggles. The social field structures the superstructure of the political field. From this perspective, politics is about fetishism and semblance (for a similar position see for
instance Derrida 1993). The real game is played behind the scenes in the
social field between competing social classes that are connected to the
political field via numerous structural equivalences. In the social field, in
turn, the criterion of individual success is social class. The Marxist division into economic versus cultural finds an equivalent in Bourdieu’s division into the social and the symbolic/political.
The core of Bourdieu’s critique of democracy is in his analysis of political representation. Following Thomas Aquinas and Karl Marx, Bourdieu
examines representation and delegation as measures by which the people
transfer its political power to a representative. Both re-presentation and
re-production imply a process of duplication, which is the precondition
for any kind of social life. Duplication can be synchronic when it takes
xviii
Introduction
place between an individual and a group or diachronic when structures
and authority relationships are transferred to a new generation. In the
Western metaphysical tradition, the second is ontologically, epistemically
and morally inferior to the first, that which is re-presented or re-­produced.
But in the social world, presentation is often, paradoxically, secondary
in relation to re-presentation (as repetition). Bourdieu’s work can be
seen as developing an empirical analysis of the dialectics production/
re-­production and presentation/re-presentation.
In Bourdieu’s political theory, the transfer of power is a form of alienation. The transfer of power means that (the) people give up their original sovereignty to a representative. Why does this need to be? The
reason for this is that an individual can get her voice heard in politics
only by converting it into a group voice. In order to avoid complete
political alienation, abandoning one’s own voice is necessary. This is
how groups become political players. Following Durkheim (and
Rousseau), group formation is an example of social magic, by which a
group of atomized individuals turns into a social actor. The symbolic
logic of recognition/misrecognition is inscribed in this social metamorphosis. The group becomes a social actor when the representative is seen
as legitimately representing the group, and the objects of this alienation
do not see that this transfer of power is alienation and nothing more.
Bourdieu says that democracy is logically impossible as long as the representative (person, organization) monopolizes speech. Indeed, once
the representative speaks on behalf of the group, she can manipulate the
group in its own name.
Bourdieu’s analysis of politics and journalism follows his broader field
theory. The basic idea can be found in Weber’s sociology of religion
(1922), where he speaks, following a neo-Calvinist blueprint, of different
spheres of social life, the economy, culture and religion. Political capital
is the type of symbolic capital individuals operating in the political field
will try to accumulate. Politics follows a twofold logic which pervades all
its levels—from the historical development of political practices to political ideas. Those at the autonomous pole (the ‘rich’) have the most political capital, those at the dominated (the ‘poor’) pole the least. This
symbolic structure defines the objective relationships between agents as
well as the strategies they adopt. The web of political positions taken,
Introduction
xix
which mirrors the web of social positions, defines the value of individual
positions. In contrast to Weber’s analysis of life spheres, Bourdieu’s field
is linguistic. The basic idea comes from Saussure (for a critique of this
idea, see Kauppi 2000). The value of an element depends on the web of
relations in which this element is inscribed. In the same way, as the letter
‘a”s value is determined in relation to the letters of the alphabet, the
importance of a political idea at a given moment is determined by its relations with other political ideas available at that same time.
The structuration of the field around two poles emphasizes the tension
and conflict between change and stability. The dual logic permeates all
levels, from political ideologies and organizations to the level of the individual and her political habitus. In addition to political capital, political
action will be defined by other types of capital, for example, economic
and cultural capital. Bourdieu’s analysis of capital includes two partly
contradictory definitions of value. The first argues that value is relative, or
syntactic. The fewer that have access to it, the more valuable it is. Rarity
is valuable. The second argues that value is proportional to the amount of
trust. For example, citizens may trust a politician, who is then able to
turn this confidence into political capital via her election.
Following Weber and Marx, Bourdieu equates politics with power
struggle. The task of social science is to reveal the mechanisms of these
power struggles. In order to reveal a hidden reality, the distinction
between real and apparent reality is necessary. In contrast to Weber’s perspectivism and nominalism, Bourdieu’s real reality can be grasped only
via scientific means. Perhaps this is why Bourdieu’s analysis of reality has
an ontological bias. Unless elevated by science, everyday life and everyday
politics can only represent epiphenomena. Politics is symbolic in the
pejorative sense. Symbolic interaction, communication and the media
are part of this re-presented, secondary reality.
Herein lies the main problem of Bourdieu’s approach from the point
of view of political sociology. While it does enable a sophisticated theoretical analysis of domination, his approach is unable to provide a sufficiently fine-tuned perspective on issues of power in the EU. In his
writings, he presents the mechanisms of domination as being universal
and ahistorical. For him, European integration was nothing more than a
capitalist project. He did not see anything productive in it. Bourdieu did
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Introduction
not study how democracy, as a form of governance, differs from other
forms of governance. He explored how political re-presentation and the
idea of transfer of power led to alienation and how domination was present even where one did not think it operated. Bourdieu agreed with
Weber on this formal point. But in contrast to Weber, Bourdieu saw
social domination as ubiquitous because he considered political processes
as always private acts that presented themselves as public acts. Politics was
about camouflage and embezzlement. Political interests were somebody’s
private interests. If the state is understood as an institution that defines
and represents the common, public interest, in Bourdieu’s political theory is stateless (for more thorough analysis see Chaps. 12 and 13).
One way forward is to move away from a formal and theoretical analysis of politics and power to an empirical one that partly draws on qualitative differences between democracy as a system of domination and power
and other political systems. Democratic systems have their own rules that
rely on open elections and freedom of expression, among other things.
There are empirically legitimate, socially and historically constructed
common interests that appear justified to a majority of the population.
These interests are not necessarily as arbitrary or illegitimate as Bourdieu’s
theory would lead us to believe. However, they do involve power relations and various forms of inequality. From this research perspective,
publicity is more than a mechanism that enables the one group to dominate the others. Elections are more than a ritual that confirms the social
domination of certain political groups.
To this distinction between democracy and other power regimes has to
be added another distinction between national and supranational politics. There is more to EU politics than just processes of extension or
reproduction of existing national or international power structures.
Rather, supranational politics creates new interests and power resources
that need to be studied. Both the meaning of political action in a democratic society and the role of political participation as a potential constructive force have to be empirically analyzed. In order to provide a more
complex picture of political action that also considers politics as productive activity, this volume seeks to develop a political sociology of the EU
that builds on structural constructivism’s analysis of power by deepening
the analysis of democratic politics.
Introduction
xxi
In European political science, some scholars, largely forgotten today,
have attempted to theorize European integration as a political project.
French political scientist Pierre Duclos devised at the beginning of the
1960s the concept of ‘politification’ to describe the political dynamics of
European integration (Duclos 1962; Sidjanski 2003, p. 538; Meynaud
and Sidjanski 1965; see Kauppi et al. 2016 for analysis). By politification,
he meant the transfer of power from the national to the supranational
level, a level that would be equipped with considerable executive power.
He considered that a society is ‘politified’ to the extent that it has ‘a special organization capable of maintaining, failing the approval, consent or
agreement of the group, the group’s cohesion, survival, and adaptation’
(Duclos 1962).
This transfer to ‘a special organization’ could be sudden. Duclos had in
mind the Constitution of the USA, or gradual like in the case of European
integration. Politification would mean that political procedures would
replace the normal diplomatic procedures reigning in international politics. In Duclos’s mind, politification is a broad development that has to
do with procedure or the rules of the political game, the substitution of a
diplomatic procedure with a political procedure that could include parliamentary and democratic procedures, although he did not specify this.
It involves a collective conversion, a transformation in the guiding values
of groups and individuals. It requires in the words of Swiss political scientist Dusan Sidjanski ‘the attractive diffusion of a certain number of
concepts and ethical principles that will reinforce the innermost convictions (of Europeans) relative to a unified Europe’ (Sidjanski 2003).
From today’s perspective, this optimistic global triumph of the political procedure has failed. Furthermore, while professional politicians in
the EU perceive European integration as a political process, in the sense
that political positions in supranational institutions the European
Commission and the European Parliament are integrated into their career
paths, European citizens have weak knowledge of European politics, and
are on the whole not interested in European Parliament elections for
instance. In fact, one could even say that the opposite of what Duclos
imagined has happened. To European citizens, the politification of
European integration has in reality meant a process of depolitization, in
the dual sense that it has been presented as being nonpolitical and that
xxii
Introduction
they have been kept at an arm’s length from it. This depolitization and
lack of public debate about political alternatives combined to s­ upranational
‘policies without politics’ have contributed to increasing political opacity
and a generalization of doubt, distrust and political disenchantment.
A key aspect that Bourdieu repeatedly emphasized in his teaching, and
visible in all of his work from Algeria to France, is the issue of practices,
the point of view of the actors involved in politics and to power processes
that surpass them. Lévi-Strauss’s concept of bricolage in La pensée sauvage
(see Lévi-Strauss 2008; Mérand 2012) encapsulates this idea. The actions
of the objects under study can be described in terms of bricolage. The
political bricolage approach to European integration and politics is a
point of view that does not rule out ‘theories’, but emphasizes that fundamentally individuals and groups shape the political order and that this
logic is not reducible to a ‘theory’ such as neofunctionalism, neorealism,
institutionalism, multilevel governance, world culture theory or intergovernmentalism. They find themselves in fundamentally uncertain circumstances, face novel situations and try to manage with the means at hand.
This activity does not rule out scholarly theories, it even requires them,
but its logic can be only very imperfectly captured by them. Sociological
studies are always partial retrospective rationalizations.
The issues discussed throughout the volume revolve around the crucial
question of the role of the nation-state, its changing parameters of action
and of knowledge production that is tied to it. The aim is to further a
political sociological account of these transformations, building on
insights from Bourdieu and Weber, by developing an action-oriented
structural constructivist field approach. Action as the practices of the
agents (the bricolage logic) more than structure will be the focus. Fields
will be understood more as evolving spaces of political and social action
that are being structured than as static constructions. They will be viewed
as interactive spaces and more or less open fields rather than as hermetic,
closed spaces. Emerging practices cannot be reduced to preexisting structures or power constellations. Fields are evolving, more structured in the
center where the finalities and rules of social action take shape than in the
periphery, where more or less successful alternatives are formulated.
Fields are expanding or shrinking, depending on how they succeed in
attracting interest and in influencing individual and group strategies.
Introduction
xxiii
This perspective resonates with Weber’s comment, contra Bismarck, that
politics is not the art of the possible but that of the impossible.
Part I focuses on evolving transnational fields, Part II on the changing
role of academics and universities in this evolution and Part III on
Bourdieu’s works on politics and the media. Part I includes a series of
writings on transnational processes in the European context. Chapter 1
was originally titled ‘Structures of Domination in the EU’ but then developed into a broader piece on what sociology can bring to the study of EU
politics. The aim was to develop a political sociology approach that would
contrast with more institutional, mainstream approaches. Chapter 2
reflects on the political ontology of research on the EU, trying to go
deeper into the unformulated and taken-for-granted principles of
research. Chapter 3 is a contribution to the analysis of ‘integration’ in
supranational contexts. Chapter 4 places research on the EU in a broader
theoretical framework, bringing in recent studies in IR. Chapter 5 was
originally published in French in a volume edited by Aurélie Campana,
Emmanuel Henri and Jay Rowell (La construction des problèmes publics en
Europe, Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2007) and deals with the
European Commission’s failed attempt to democratize European governance. The last piece in this part deals with a political sociology approach
to the EU and the difficulties of studying the EU. It came out originally
in Finnish in a volume on EU studies (Johdatus Euroopan Unionin politiikkaan, University of Helsinki, Department of Political Science, 2014).
Part II shifts the focus to academics, universities and the bureaucratization and the marketization of the production of knowledge in the
European context. Chapter 7 deals with intellectual traditions in Europe,
as incarnated in the figures of the critical and the functional intellectual.
Chapter 8 is a study on current transformations in European academic
life. Chapter 9 explores the effects of the current quantification of quality
on political science and its publications, criticizing the current number
mania or dataism in science policy. The following Chap. 10 deals with
social science and its political effects. What is the role of social science in
today’s world?
Part III, Bourdieusian meditations, is a take on Husserl’s Cartesian
meditations and Bourdieu’s Pascalian meditations. As meditations, they
are personal bits and pieces on various aspects of Bourdieu’s oeuvre that
xxiv
Introduction
I found stimulating. They are all for and against Bourdieu. Chapter 11 is
a reflection of the limits of Bourdieu’s often-quoted analysis of the
­transnational. Chapter 12 was composed as an analysis of Bourdieu’s
studies of the media and more broadly the role of public discussion and
debate in contemporary democracies. Chapter 13 is a study of Bourdieu’s
theory of politics. Two pieces compose Chap. 14. The first part was originally the introduction I wrote to two of Bourdieu’s books translated into
Finnish, Contre-feux and Sur la télévision (Vastatulet, Televisiosta, Otava,
1999). These were occasions not only to present these works to a Finnish
audience already familiar with Bourdieu but also to share some of my
experiences as a PhD student in Bourdieu’s seminar. The last part is a
piece published in the largest Finnish daily, Helsingin sanomat, after the
death of Bourdieu. Chapter 15 deals with something altogether different,
a sociological interpretation of Kant’s and Schiller’s theory of the sublime, applied to the fall of the Soviet Union. The key issue in this chapter
is the lack of concepts to the study of major, macro-level political transformations as well as the interface between the symbolic and physical
violence, a theme undertheorized in Bourdieu’s work. An epilogue draws
together some of the main ideas of the volume.
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Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The Social Construction of Reality.
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Boltanski, L. (1973). L’espace positionnel : multiplicité des positions
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3–26.
Boltanski, L. (1982). Les cadres. Paris: Minuit.
Champagne, P. (1991). Faire l’opinion. Paris: Minuit.
Charle, C. (1990). Naissance des “intellectuels” 1880–1900. Paris: Minuit.
Derrida, J. (1993). Spectres de Marx. L’État de la dette, le travail de deuil et
la nouvelle Internationale. Paris: Galilée.
Dubois, J. (2000). Pierre Bourdieu and Literature. Substance, 93, 3.
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Duclos, P. (1962). La politification: trois exposés. Politique, April–June:
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Foucault, M. (1980). Tarkkailla ja rangaista. Helsinki: Otava.
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Kauppi, N. (1996b). European Institutions and French Political Careers.
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Kauppi, N. (2000). The Politics of Embodiment: Habits, Power, and Pierre
Bourdieu’s Theory. Frankfurt/New York: Peter Lang.
Kauppi, N. (2005). Democracy, Social Resources and Political Power in the
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Kauppi, N., & Swartz, D. (2015). Global Bourdieu. Comparative
Sociology, 14, 564–584.
Kauppi, N., Palonen, K., & Wiesner, C. (2016). The Politification and
Politicisation of the EU. Redescriptions, 19(1), 72–90.
Lévi-Strauss, C. (2008). Oeuvres complètes. Paris: La Pléiade.
Medvetz, T., & Sallaz, J. (Eds.). (2018). Handbook of Pierre Bourdieu.
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Mérand, F. (2012). Bricolage: A Sociological Approach to the Making of
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Meynaud, J., & Sidjanski, D. (1965). Science politique et intégration européenne. Genève: Bulletin du Centre européen de la culture, X/6.
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Cambridge University Press.
Part I
The Politics of Transnational
Integration
1
Toward a Sociology of EU Politics
Aside from a few exceptions (for instance Deutsch 1962 and Haas 1958),
sociological works are relative newcomers to the field of European integration and more recently of European Union (EU) politics. Since the
beginning of European integration in the 1950s, economists, jurists,
political scientists and scholars in international relations (IR) have developed a vast body of literature on European integration. Since the end of
the 1990s, a revival of sociological approaches has taken place with the
introduction of sociological works into research in IR and European integration studies (Christiansen et al. 1999; Wendt 1999). Partly inspired
by American sociologists like Erving Goffman and George Herbert
Mead, this broad movement called social constructivism has succeeded in
widening the scope of political science research and deepening several key
issues such as those having to do with identity and discourse.
Society has been the traditional object of sociology. The field has
focused on issues such as stratification into upper and lower classes,
mobility in terms of circulation of people and groups and all forms of
inequality. However, all human activity includes social aspects and can be
successfully studied from a sociological perspective (see for a stimulating
read, Berger 1963). In this chapter, I will discuss some of the intellectual
© The Author(s) 2018
N. Kauppi, Toward a Reflexive Political Sociology of the European Union,
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71002-0_1
3
4
N. Kauppi
tools that sociology can mobilize in the analysis of EU politics, and then
follow with a closer investigation of some sociological research. To
illustrate EU politics, I have chosen to concentrate on the European
Parliament, the most democratic European institution, composed today
of 751 members directly elected from the current 28 EU member-states.
I will contrast the sociological approach and its advantages with more
traditional research.
European integration has provided new objects of analysis for sociologists working on political issues and for political scientists with a sociological bent. Some of these scholars study transformations in European
societies (Bartolini 2005; Medrano 2003) while others focus more on the
European Union as a new polity (for useful overviews of English-language
research, see Favell 2007 and Zimmermann and Favell 2011). Yet others
have developed a more specific form of sociological analysis that has also
been labeled structural constructivist (for analysis, see Ansart 1990;
Bourdieu 1989; Kauppi 1996b; Manners 2007). This sociological perspective highlights the general and specific structures of power and competition that keep societies together by analyzing individual and group
action. Some groups wield more power than others and rely on a variety
of resources and institutionalized processes to protect their status and
increase their power. In this chapter, I will outline some of the main
points of this type of approach to EU politics that has also been labeled
the Strasbourg school (for empirical research, see for instance Beauvallet
2007; Beauvallet and Michon 2010; Beauvallet et al. 2016; Campana
et al. 2007; Erkkilä and Piironen 2013; Georgakakis 2002, 2012;
Georgakakis and de Lassalle 2008; Kauppi 2005; Kauppi and Madsen
2008, 2013; Kull 2008; Madsen 2011; Mangenot 1998 and Michel
2006).
A sociological approach to EU politics involves the social factors that
influence and shape EU politics. These can be studied at the level of the
individual, the social group and the field of action1 involved. The link
between individuals and politics is never direct. Individuals are always
members of various groups and enact various social roles. Furthermore,
individual action is conditioned and channeled by various institutions
such as elections, political parties, parliaments and so on (March and
Olsen 1984). Actors can be individuals, groups or even institutions
Toward a Sociology of EU Politics
5
(Mayntz and Scharpf 2001). All fields of action that encompass individuals, groups and institutions involve political aspects. The political field
proper is formed of all the individuals, institutions and procedures that
regulate politics in the traditional sense of the term.
Engaged in action in the world, individuals and groups mobilize available resources in their struggle for power. Following a classical definition,
power is the ability to influence other peoples’ behavior (Weber 1968).
This can be done through a variety of means: physical force, charisma,
persuasion, blackmail, bad conscience and so on. Power limits and
empowers (see for this conception, Lukes 2005). Agents’ scope of action
is always constrained by a variety of social, economic, technological and
other factors. Power empowers because individuals and groups, and even
weaker ones in some circumstances (Havel 1990), can influence and even
transform reality.
In this endeavor to study the human dimension of EU politics, sociological research has mobilized a variety of quantitative and qualitative
research techniques. A central concern is the statistical analysis of the
characteristics of the groups involved in European politics, such as
Members of the European Parliament, European civil servants and judges
of the European Court of Justice. Scholars have painstakingly collected
this statistical material from a variety of sources, such as administrative
directories and official EU almanacs. They have examined the influence
of education, gender and political experience on political careers and
group formation (prosopographic studies). These works have shown that
certain social qualifications, such as degrees from elite schools or ministerial political experience, are necessary to make it to the top in European
politics. Quantitative studies based on in-depth interviews of individuals,
ethnographic fieldwork and discursive analysis of historical documents
have complemented quantitative analysis. The perceptions and interpretations that individuals attach to their actions and to the institutions in
which they operate have enriched the more numerical analysis provided
by statistical analysis.
Instead of a theory, the sociological approach developed here serves as
a heuristic device by which the scholar can mentally construct an object
of research. As a tool of reflection, this device enables the scholar to analyze in a structured manner the phenomenon under scrutiny, in this case
6
N. Kauppi
EU politics (see Kauppi 2005 for a more thorough analysis). Basing
myself on empirical research, I divided the space under scrutiny along
two salient dimensions: executive power/legislative power and supranational/national.
Both axes can be interpreted as representing characteristics of individuals, groups or institutions as well as power strategies and resources. In
the case of the European political field, they represent different types of
political resources such as executive-legislative (axis A) and European-­
national resources (axis B). Groups and individuals situated close to A1
would have at their disposal executive resources while those closer to A2
would have at their disposal legislative resources. Similarly, those closer to
B1 would have at their disposal European sources of power whereas those
closer to B2 would have national resources at their disposal. For instance,
group one would be constituted of individuals with a lot of European
executive resources, group two of those with significant amounts of
European legislative resources, group three with national executive
resources and group four with national legislative resources. These group
features can then be correlated with other characteristics such as nationality, gender, education, political activities and so on. For instance, those
with considerable European executive resources are more likely to be men
than women. This same formal heuristic device (dimensions A1–A2 and
B1–B2) can be applied to any research topic (see for instance Kauppi
1996a for analysis of French political and intellectual radicalism in the
1960s). Analysis of correlations and correspondence between various
social variables provide the statistical extension of this heuristic device
(see Bourdieu 1984 for a sophisticated application and Le Roux and
Rouanet 2004 for further elaborations).
The European Union constitutes a kind of institutional superfield that
is composed of a variety of smaller scale, relatively autonomous fields of
action such as national political fields (the French political field, the
Finnish political field…), institutional fields such as the European
Commission and the European Parliament and specialized sectors of
public policies (for instance defense, transport and social policy). Each
field of political action is comprised of individuals, groups, institutions,
procedures and policies. This complex architecture evolves and is variably
Toward a Sociology of EU Politics
7
structured. In the following section, institutions such as the European
Parliament are taken as fields of action in which politicians engage.
Power and Resources
A sociological approach to EU politics seeks to link politics to broader
social and cultural factors and processes at the level of the individual, the
group and the fields of action. The object of a sociology of the EU is not
the EU or its political institutions as such but rather the individuals who
make up the EU and the interaction between individuals and, more
broadly, the worlds in which they live (for elaboration see Kauppi and
Madsen 2008, see also Chap. 2). Certain sociological concepts link all
these levels (individual-group-institution-field) to one another, forming a
prism through which EU politics can be analyzed. Institutionalization
and specialization or professionalization are key terms. Institutionalization
refers to the establishment of customs, practices and patterns of social
interaction. Specialization and professionalization refer to the fact that
society is becoming more complex and requires that individuals specialize
in certain tasks through the creation of new professions such as those of
the Member of the European Parliament (MEP) or the European
Commissioner. Institutional role is another key concept. A role refers to
the identity an individual has to acquire to be a competent actor. For
instance, a French politician who is nominated to the post of European
Commissioner in Brussels has to learn a new role that carries with it certain obligations and rights such as those of representing the EU and not
France (for analysis see Egeberg 2006). In this case, the institution in
question imposes certain values on the individual. However, if the institutional role in question is a new one, for instance a newly created
Commissioner’s post in charge of a new policy area, the individual creating the post (its first occupant) might have significant influence on the
definition of the role in question. If, on the contrary, the institutional role
is already strongly codified (institutionally regulated), individual influence is more modest. The formation of institutional roles is a key element
in the broader process of socialization of individuals, of learning to act in
a competent manner and of the institutionalization of policy sectors.
8
N. Kauppi
Institutionalization involves the construction of roles and of organizational structures and procedures that regulate action and distribute power
(see for a general presentation, Berger and Luckmann 1966). I would like
to discuss more closely yet another sociological concept, that of resource.
An established way to study political power is to analyze the resources
agents’ have access to. By resources I mean any kind of valued symbolic
entity that can legitimately be used to influence outcomes in a specific
field of action. Economic resources include money and other financial
means, physical resources physical qualities such as strength and beauty
(or their lack as in the case of a handicap), cultural resources education
and knowledge, political resources political recognition, legitimacy and
more broadly legitimate means of influencing political outcomes (running for political office, voting, donating money, writing letters to decision makers…) (Dahl 1998). Central issues in the analysis of resources
include their accumulation (how does one get more resources), their conversion (how does one use economic resources to get political resources?)
and usage (how does one use economic resources in politics?).
Resources vary as to their level of tangibility and generality. Material or
tangible resources can be stocked and reused as such or converted into
other resources. Material resources can include, for instance financial
resources such as money, stocks or other investments, or educational
resources such as diplomas and professional certificates. Although their
value fluctuates to some extent, these objectified (externalized and separated from individuals) resources are relatively stable. They can be transported from one context to another without losing their value. A dollar is
a dollar in the USA and in Europe. At the other end of the spectrum of
resources, symbolic resources such as political resources are, more than
material social resources, based on social recognition. They are intangible
and more unstable, requiring from their users action that sustain their
value. Similar resources such as social capital require constant upkeep and
usage. They are also more bound to certain social configurations. An
individual might have a lot of social capital in Paris, but this social capital
might have little value in Brussels. Contrary to physical objects and their
usage (usage equals depreciation in value), symbolic objects require usage
and recognition (usage equals increase in value). More recognition equals
more symbolic credit that equals more potential for action for the
Toward a Sociology of EU Politics
9
i­ ndividual having access to the resource in question. Political elections for
instance are a way to acquire political resources. But the winning candidate has to use the symbolic credit that has been attributed to him; otherwise, its value will depreciate.
Individual usage of resources is not enough because action never takes
place in a social vacuum. Reproducing resources horizontally (in various
fields where the individual occupies positions) and vertically (transmitting resources to one’s off springs) requires collective action and work.
For instance, money as a form of resource that is relatively easily transported, transmitted and reused might owe its high value as a type of
resource to the fact that it is universally recognized and taken by all competent individuals as a legitimate form of power. It is not put into question and it is reproduced by a complex infrastructure of institutions
(banks, exchange rates…) and individuals (ordinary individuals, investors…). For this reason, it can be reused as such in more specialized fields
of action like politics, transmitted to other individuals or converted into
other resources (time, contacts, services…).
Apart from their degree of materiality, resources can also be distinguished from one another in terms of their generality. More generic
resources such as social capital is necessary in any social configuration.
Without social relationships between individuals, society would not exist.
Binding and bridging types of social capital (Putnam 2000) might not,
however, be very transportable. Usage and conversion will be possible if
and only if the individual who has access to this resource will be inserted
in networks that span across several groups, institutions and fields. More
specialized types of resources such as European political resources are
linked with European political fields and their institutions (The European
Commission, the European Parliament, the European Court of Justice
and so on) that have developed at a specific time in history. Generality is
tied to another feature of resources: their source. The source can be collective or individual. Collective resources include those that an organization offers to its members. These can be office space, stationery but also
the right to speak in its name or to mobilize others and collective resources
around a project. Individual resources might have to do with physical
attributes or ‘gifts’ for instance. A variety of conventions control the conversion of collective resources into individual ones. For instance,
10
N. Kauppi
e­ ducational diplomas (Oxford graduate) can reinforce perceptions about
individual personal qualities (brilliant). Certain political institutions such
as those represented by one individual (the European Ombudsman, for
instance) are prone to a mixing of collective and individual resources. In
fact, the European Ombudsman is expected to use collective resources of
various kinds such as representing and speaking in the name of the EU,
using tax payers’ money to travel all over the EU to promote the office of
the Ombudsman and so on (see Erkkilä and Kauppi 2017). The types of
resources that interest us in this chapter are then relatively symbolic and
intangible (they require constant action) and relatively specific (they are
restricted to European political fields). These relatively specialized
resources are linked in multiple ways to other, specialized and generic
resources.
Resources can involve all kinds of variables, for instance education,
social and ethnic background, linguistic skills, social capital and the organizational structures in which individuals operate. In the approach developed in this chapter, groups form a larger unit of analysis for sociology.
They are the immediate context of identification for individuals. All
kinds of social groups are involved in EU-related political activities. These
include relatively large groups such as national and European elites and
masses, more circumscribed groups such as national electors, pensioners,
women, the unemployed, or more specialized professional groups such as
national and European civil servants, elected officials at all levels
(European, national, regional and local) and lobbyists. When we study
politics, we would mostly be interested in the specialized field of action
where the politicians in question are involved in. Groups, fields and societies are symbolic constructions: they are constituted of beliefs, habits,
conventions and rules of various kinds. Like most political institutions
such as the European Union, they are mostly virtual. However, to exist
they require material supports (individuals representing the institutions,
buildings, stationery…). As highly sophisticated symbolic constructions,
political institutions are both instruments of political power and objects
of a wide range of political struggles that aim at determining the scope
and nature of their policies. Because of their intangible characteristics,
they exist simultaneously in the heads of individuals and in objectified
reality. Individuals belong to several fields: they can be loving mothers or
Toward a Sociology of EU Politics
11
fathers, competitive tennis players, enthusiastic neighborhood activists
and conscientious European civil servants. As institutions exist subjectively and objectively, both dimensions have to be taken into account
when analyzing institutions. This fact is systematically overlooked by
institutional approaches to EU—politics. However, the relationship large
groups of individuals maintain with political institutions influence the
objective qualities that society attributes to these same institutions.
A Sociology of EU Politics
The sociological point of view developed here has several advantages
compared to the more traditional, mostly institutional political science
approaches to the analysis of EU politics. Firstly, ethnographic field work
(involving interviews and participant observation of political events and
rallies) can be combined with statistical analysis, as well as a more general
investigation of cleavage structures and structures of symbolic domination. In this way, the micro level can be analyzed from a macro perspective and the meanings individuals give to their actions taken into account.
For instance, individuals involved in the activities of the European
Parliament apply specific symbolic structures in their political practices
that, in turn, perpetuate specific power relations. By recurring display of
open contempt toward the European Parliament and its elections,
national ministers reinforce the public perception that the political influence of the European Parliament is weak. From this example, we see how
certain types of political action indirectly delegitimize (i.e. downplay
their significance) certain resources—in this case legislative political
resources—and reinforce the elector’s view of the EU as simply a battlefield of top leaders from large member-states (Carlyle’s great man’s history). This delegitimation actually plays into the hands of some politicians
and allows these very same politicians with significant executive political
resources to have ‘common sense’ on their side. This type of common
sense is confirmed every day in the European media and is further reinforced by some academic theories like intergovernmentalism (Moravcsik
1998). One side effect of this situation is that competing academic visions
and political alternatives (see Manners 2007; Rosamond 1999) are
12
N. Kauppi
pushed to the background. Going beyond political science perspectives
and the official normative rhetoric about the EU, the current approach
highlights the new career trajectories and possibilities that the changing
political space offers political, administrative and economic elites.
The second advantage which an approach based in sociology brings
to the study of EU politics is that, in contrast to the practices of political science or international relations, the terminology is more independent from the traditional nomenclature used in describing the European
nation-state. This may give us greater chances of gaining new insights.
The terms used by some sociologists—field and resource, for instance—
are analytical tools that can be applied within any area of research and
any national context. As such they may be less value laden than political science terminology tied to the nation-­state, its self-representations
and its mythology (Greenfeld 1992). In this mythology, and despite
globalization, European integration and a common currency in the
euro, the European nation-state is still sovereign. Political scientists
have developed models from this basis and have projected nation-state
analysis onto higher planes, including that of the EU. Dichotomies
such as national versus international or the left and the right reproduce
this way of looking at politics. The relative independence of sociology
from nation-state terminology is coupled with another advantage,
namely that sociology takes into account not only institutional and
legal structures but also, perhaps most significantly, systems of meaning and cultural/symbolic structures (Finlayson et al. 2008). In this
way, it provides analytical tools for entering into perhaps the most difficult aspect of EU politics—the analysis of nation-states in relation to
the cultural/symbolic role of the European Union. Frequently missing
in political science work that centers primarily on institutions, scholars
avoid this dimension because analyzing meaning structures requires a
great deal of familiarity with the culture in question. The sociological
approach developed here has the advantage of combining social and
cultural/symbolic structures in one analysis. The transformations
induced by European integration are not only quantitative but—
indeed, most importantly—qualitative. This is precisely what makes
them difficult to grasp.
Toward a Sociology of EU Politics
13
From this perspective, several scholars have examined European institutions such as the Commission and Parliament through analysis of
resources and their usage (including conversion into other resources).
Here political groups, such as Commissioners and MEPs (Members of
the European Parliament), political careers, European parliamentary elections and their campaigns, and civil society (the media, intellectuals…)
are the primary objects of scrutiny. These studies have shed light for
instance on the transformative effects of European Parliament elections
in national political fields. These studies show that the value of a political
investment in the European Parliament is extremely variable from
national political field to national political field, and from party to party.
In France, for example, small parties such as the Communist party and
the extreme-rightist Front National have found in the European
Parliament a strategy of political survival. Had the European Parliament
not developed in the way it has, these parties might not exist today.
Gaining a seat in the European Parliament is not only a way to secure
political resources, however. For some, like political novices, a seat in the
European Parliament provides a ‘backdoor’ opportunity to access national
politics. In the Finnish European Parliament elections of 1999, it was
seen how political novices were provided with an opportunity to convert
cultural resources (such as media fame) or economic resources (especially
private wealth) into political resources by buying airtime or by being
prominently displayed on television. In the Finnish context, these novices link political representation and group interests in a new, creative
way. Labeling these elections as of second or third order—as is often the
reflex of traditional political science (Reif and Schmitt 1980)—does not
in the least clarify their political status and uses. On the contrary, it devalues their political functions. Instead of disqualification, what is required
is a ‘phenomenological’ study of European Parliament elections in different national political fields that would demonstrate the varying meanings
attached to and the political usages made of the institution. Using the
same approach in other contexts, such as the analysis of the European
Commission, similar insights can be achieved.
A third advantage of the sociology argued for here, is its sensitivity to
the links between state and society (to simplify) as well as the institutional arrangements which structure power and produce forms of
14
N. Kauppi
­ omination. The analysis of resources links political action to society in
d
the broad sense of the term. In the French case, the role of social movements such as the ‘Hunter’s’ movement (Chasse-Pêche-Nature-Tradition,
CNPT) for instance, and the political strategies of the French Communist
Party, as they try to reinvent themselves through the European Parliament
in a dramatically transformed political landscape, both illustrate specific
uses of the Parliament. The conceptualization of the meaning of the
European Parliament and the attempts to mold this conception in the
public space are determined by such strategies relying on resources. It is
especially through the analysis of European Parliament party campaigns
that these links between ‘Europe’ as conceived and ‘Europe’ as a new
political system, are crucial in explaining party political strategies. An
analysis of political praxis enables us to link micro and macro levels of
analysis and to focus on political power and resources.
n Analysis of Political Practices
A
in the European Parliament
Instead of concentrating on institutional structures like most EU-related
research does, sociologists have redirected research toward political practices, that is focusing more on processes than objects, on what people
actually do. This approach is grounded in several considerations. Firs, the
European Union is an evolving polity in which institutional structures
are commonly not as strongly codified as at the level of the nation-state,
even considering the partial reorganization of the latter. The analysis of
individuals within the changing field thus reveals key features of the
European Union as an emergent political field (see, for instance, Ross
1995). Second, the analysis of political practices gives a clearer picture of
the forces that ‘keep the Union together’. One can scrutinize the practical
factors that explain political decisions, for instance, and more broadly,
study the mechanisms that maintain relations of power between individuals and groups. The comparison of political career patterns in the
same political field over time is a case in point. By assessing different
social groups’ political investment in the European Parliament at the
Toward a Sociology of EU Politics
15
beginning of the 1980s and again at the end of the 1990s, the changing
(and often implicit) value judgments that condition political action and
shape the various European political institutions are revealed (Beauvallet
2007; Beauvallet and Michon 2010). A third argument for an analysis of
practices, is that it leads us to an understanding of how individuals—
politicians, civil activists, intellectuals and bureaucrats—have negotiated
the transformations the EU has brought about (for a stimulating discussion see Palonen 2017). At this level of analysis, the convergence of
national political fields is necessarily a local phenomenon, embedded in
specific national cultures, meaning structures and institutional positions.
The opportunities and constraints created by this macro level process
directly challenge the political habits and reflexes of these individuals.
Despite the fact that the European Union has become more structured as
a result of nearly 50 years of integration and imposes political practices
and habits on those working within its institutions, individuals still
behave in manners characteristic of their national political culture and in
relation to their positions in domestic political fields. Politicians are faced
with contradictions that they have to solve on a practical level. For
instance, there are the tensions European Parliamentarians must negotiate between the imperatives of representing constituencies within the
nation-state, the national interest as a whole and the interests of the
European acquis. More broadly speaking, the contradiction-rich circumstances generated by the EU lead to a variety of political innovations.
These become only fully visible once we abandon standard institutional
approaches to EU politics. A fourth advantage of the processual political
practice approach is that one can analyze not just quantitative transformations, such as the evolution of the distribution of seats in the European
Parliament from 1979 onward (Reif and Schmitt 1980), but more importantly, the qualitative transformations the EU has brought about. These
include new institutional roles and identities.
The general process of European political field formation induces individuals to take into account the institutional context at the European
level and, through different political strategies, to adapt themselves and
their immediate habitat as they move from one practical regime to
another. On the one hand, individuals make use of European political
resources; on the other, they take, through introduction of European
16
N. Kauppi
directives, guidelines and the creation of new administrative positions for
instance, part in the differentiated integration of European Union institutions and practices into domestic political fields. For instance, for
national civil servants and politicians, European careers are integrated
into domestic career trajectories. European bureaucrats are not just an
elite: they are an elite of national elites. In this sense, European institutions are extensions of national political and administrative fields.
To simplify a great deal, attainment of the post of Commissioner or
MEP represents two different modes of career integration and political
legitimation—the first as an avenue toward executive legitimacy and the
second as a means of legislative legitimacy (see also Mény 1996). These
two types of political resources have been of increasing uneven value in
the European Union ever since the first elections to the European
Parliament in 1979. While French European Commissioners have
become ministerial-level politicians, French MEPs are situated at a relatively low level, between regional politicians and national deputies. From
this it can be clearly deduced, that experience in the European Parliament
is still an appendix to a politician’s curriculum vitae. However, there are
signs indicating a changing trend. For instance, before becoming Finland’s
foreign minister, Alexander Stubb was an MEP with no domestic political experience. Experience as a Commissioner, by contrast, is increasingly
seen as a necessary stepping stone for an ambitious politician, enabling
him or her to be classified as a ‘European statesman’ integrated into
supranational and global executive multilateral networks (Zürn 2004). In
the French political field for instance, political groups in executive positions utilize European posts as an extension of the domestic ministerial
cabinet system, whereas other political groups use these posts are a means
to enter national electoral politics through the back door provided by the
European Parliament.
Since the first direct elections to the European Parliament in 1979, the
political status of the institution has evolved from a weak institution to
one than has more and more political power (Katz and Wessels 1999).
This transformation is due to both internal and external developments.
The political work inside the Parliament has become more professionalized, although unevenly so. In the political science literature, the French
representatives in the European Parliament have, in contrast to their
Toward a Sociology of EU Politics
17
British and German counterparts for instance, been the examples of ‘bad’
Europeans not taking their work seriously. Sociological research shows,
that professionalization has touched even the French contingent. From
amateurs of European legislative representation, numerous French
Members of the European Parliament have become real professionals of
Europe (for details see Beauvallet 2007; Beauvallet et al. 2016). For many
of them, it is not only a full-time job instead of a secondary occupation,
but it is also a more and more specialized job. Some MEPs specialize in
environmental issues, others in issues relative to economic development
or transportation. In this sense, career development in the European
Parliament has become increasingly dependent on the specific competence MEPs can acquire in the European Parliament itself and not just on
previous political experience in the French political field. Indeed, many
of them do not have previous political experience. In other words, specialization and professionalization have become dependent on internal
factors to the political institution that the European Parliament is (for a
similar analysis for the Commission see Georgakakis and de Lassalle
2008). These developments are illustrated by an increase in MEPs
reelected and having political experience in EU institutions. For instance,
while 12.3 percent of the cohort of 1979 had MEP experience, the figure
had risen to 35.6 percent for the 1994 cohort.
In a very real sense, a European legislative elite has developed, an elite
that is set to further the development of a transnational democracy of a
new kind. This process of specialization in the European Parliament and
the formation of a European legislative elite has been simultaneous with
important transformations in the European Union as a political field and
more specifically in the relationships between its key institutions, the
European Commission, Parliament and Council.
European integration deepened with the Single European Act, the
treaty on the European Union and the Amsterdam Treaty. The European
Union has also expanded considerably to become a polity with 27
member-­
states. The position of Parliament has strengthened. It has
become a key player in the European legislative process. Its efforts to
represent ordinary Europeans have succeeded as it is seen more than
before as a popular counter-weight to the Commission, a faceless bureaucracy and the Council representing national governments. This process of
18
N. Kauppi
empowerment has given backing to the specialization process inside the
European Parliament. However, this institutionalization of the European
Parliament has also been dependent on national developments in the
member-states of the European Union.
To give you one example the European Parliament elections of 1999
played a crucial role in French political history, introducing several innovations. Despite France’s foundational role in the European Communities
in the 1950s, it was the first time that French political parties had to
elaborate their own interpretations of issues such as a European defense
policy and European taxation. Lists and parties imagined their own vision
of Europe and of France’s place in it. ‘Europe’ became an important element in the legitimation of political action. French intellectuals also got
involved in this process of symbolic construction of Europe. By criticizing the Socialists and the Communists, extreme-leftist Trotskyist movements represented by Arlette Laguiller and Alain Krivine won seats in the
European Parliament. In general, the elections empowered small political
parties and voiceless antiestablishment movements to present their own
versions of France’s role in the European project. Some lists, such as that
organized by the Communist Party, included members from outside
their own organizations. The French Communist Party (PCF) included
non-Party social activists of color, for example. By elaborating the idea of
double parity—‘single’ parity being the equal representation of women—
the Communists moved to bring voiceless groups such as France’s
Muslims and the unemployed into the political process.
It was found that, throughout these changes, while individuals perpetuate domestic structures and their in-built power relations, there are
also innovations. Because European Parliament elections are considered
less important and thus considered more accessible to alternative political
entrepreneurs, certain French politicians, civil activists and intellectuals
have used them to challenge the dominant political values of their
national political field. Political parties and lists constructed their own
image of what Europe should be, and in the process questioned the official, executive-level vision of the EU. Unlike the latter, mainstream discourses that concentrated on a unified, republican France, several
left-oriented candidates that stood in the elections constructed a vision of
an alternative, more democratic Europe where non-Christians, the
Toward a Sociology of EU Politics
19
­ nemployed, women and regional representatives would also have a pubu
lic voice.
To give you another example in another configuration, the Finnish
political field, a new type of political representative was invented. The
elected diplomat was a Finnish MEP who acted in the interest of his
country as a whole rather than in the interest of any specific political
group. The cultural condition for the invention of this type of political
representation was a collective sense of exteriority to Europe while the
political condition was the withdrawal of the top political leaders (as part
of a delegitimation strategy) from the European Parliament election campaigns. The elected diplomat was chosen more on the basis of her cultural
resources than of the traditional collective political resources a politician
normally has access to.
What these studies show is that, despite the limited political value of
the European Parliament in French and Finnish politics and of legislative
legitimacy in the European political field as a whole (Abélès 1990; Katz
and Wessels 1999), the European Parliament has played a significant role
in the transformation of the French and Finnish political fields. It has
enabled dominated groups such as female politicians, regional politicians
and political novices to build political careers for themselves and legitimize issues that would otherwise have been left off the political agenda.
In Conclusion
A block of over 500 million inhabitants, the largest economic player in
the world with 20 percent of global imports and exports and the most
complex political field ever realized, the EU also comprises a European
bureaucracy of around 30,000 EU civil servants, a legal system, a currency (the euro), numerous policy sectors and historically grounded
domestic political fields. But our understanding of EU politics is mostly
limited to the picture created by political scientists, economists and legal
scholars. In this picture, the EU is either an institutional machinery that
operates by itself or the battleground of super individuals like Nicolas
Sarkozy and Angela Merkel (Carlyle’s great man theory). Consequently,
the human dimension has been missing. A sociological account makes
20
N. Kauppi
clear what is evident: the EU does not do anything by itself. To understand the EU as a polity, the nature of its power and the effects of its policies, one has to know who the individuals and groups making up the EU
are, where they come from, what kinds of resources they have access to,
how they perceive their role, the institutions in which they work and
more broadly the world around them. This is what a sociological approach
to EU politics is all about.
In this endeavor, sociological studies have focused on the characteristics of individuals, on institutional roles, and on the historical development of EU institutions through concepts such as institutionalization
and specialization. Sociologists have developed the concept of European
political fields—more or less structured spaces for action—in which individuals and groups struggle for political power. Grounded in a variety of
resources such as nationality, culture and gender, they maintain and reinforce specific subjective and objective forms of political domination. In
this process, certain individuals and institutions like the European
Commission have accrued more power while others such as national parliaments have lost it (see Magnette 2006).
This sociological perspective enables us to give new light to the notorious democratic deficit of the EU, that is, the claim that the EU is not a
democratic polity. An analysis of the democratic deficit requires close
scrutiny of the concrete political practices that produce it. Two factors
seem to contribute to the current perception of the democratic deficit of
the European Union. First, supranational executive networks have
become more autonomous, reinforcing the dominance of the resources
they control in the heuristic matrix composed of the dimensions
‘European-national’ and ‘executive-legislative’. It is these two axes, which
structure EU politics and which can be seen as cleavage structures conditioning individual trajectories. The problem summed up in the term
‘democratic deficit’ is that major political decisions are made in executive
networks relatively detached from democratic control. Some of the
mechanisms of this detachment have been described above. The second
reason for a perception of a lack of democracy is that while the evolution
of the European political field has induced convergence of institutions,
practices and norms, the numerous historically more established national
political fields continue to constrain the development of European
Toward a Sociology of EU Politics
21
democracy. The European Parliament is still a (relatively) weakly valued
institution. This is because, for the individuals and groups involved in
EU politics, domestic political culture is still an ‘iron cage’ that conditions the status of European political resources and the desirability of
posts in various European institutions, especially the European
Commission and Parliament. Through their everyday political activities
and choices, individuals reinforce, often without realizing it, these symbolic relationships of power.
Note
1. In contrast to Bourdieu’s structural and linguistic conception of the field,
the interpretation developed here comes closer in some respect to Weber’s
action-oriented idea of life spheres (Weber 1922) (see Kauppi 2000 and
2005 for a fuller discussion). Fields can include institutions and organizations as well as practices and conventions.
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2
Exploring the Political Ontology
of European Integration
European studies are characterized by an increasing number of empirical
studies. For scholars, it is difficult to keep up with the multilingual publication pace. One way to make sense of all this is to do some theory, and
more specifically to engage in a study, in ontology. How does research
define the basic elements of the political realm and the beings that inhabit
it? What are the underlying construction presuppositions of the EU as an
object of academic knowledge? The starting position of this ontological
reflection is antirealist in the sense that it is assumed, following Carnap’s
classical statement (1950), that several ontological frameworks are possible depending on their purposes. Consequently, there is no answer to the
classical philosophical and metaontological question of the objective criteria for deciding if the realists or the antirealists (or nominalists) are
right. In this chapter, I will discuss the issue of ontology through an
analysis of EU research and its interpretations of the nature of political
reality. I will argue that the exclusive political ontology structuring much
research on the EU prevents a more complex theoretical and empirical
understanding of political reality: its implausible ontology needs to be
revised and a more inclusive, reflexive ontology developed. Institutional
development cannot be examined without two key elements that are
© The Author(s) 2018
N. Kauppi, Toward a Reflexive Political Sociology of the European Union,
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71002-0_2
25
26
N. Kauppi
often missing in an exclusive ontological framework: agents or actors
(individuals, groups and communities of various kinds) and contexts
(institutional, economic, political and so on at various levels of generality). Contrary to what a proponent of the exclusive ontological framework has argued (Tsebelis 1990, p. 43), in the inclusive ontological
framework actors are not interchangeable.
The background for this theoretical reflection is informed by a number
of empirical studies that have been conducted in recent years on European
political institutions (for a ‘classical’ statement see Christiansen et al.
2001; for empirical examples see also Cohen and Vauchez 2007; Kauppi
2005; Landorff 2016; Medrano 2003; Mérand 2008; for an overview of
theory see Saurugger 2009, see also Kauppi and Madsen 2008). Generally,
these works argue that the logic of change of essential European institutions like the European Commission and the European Parliament is not
only due to institutional dynamics but also linked to transnational interplays of differentiated agents (individuals and groups) operating simultaneously in multiple social spheres. These studies suggest that institutions
and particularly institutional change have to be explained in the light of
both new policy challenges and the preferences and habits of the agents
making up these institutions and their surroundings. Consequently, such
an analysis challenges a number of firmly held ontological assumptions of
research on the EU on issues such as agency-structure and material-­
ideational. Moreover, it defies the common view of rationality as exogenous. Not all agents are equally rational or irrational but play different
roles and rely on differentiated knowledge. Ultimately, examining these
interplays allows for a more accurate understanding of both agents and
institutions in the EU. However, in order to ground this approach a more
thorough ontological reflection is needed.
In the following sections, I will explore these issues through two ideal-­
typical ontological positions that I will call, for want of better terms, an
exclusive ontological framework and an inclusive (or reflexive) ontological framework that is close to an antirealist, or in other registers postpositivist, postnaturalist or structuralist (Hay 2006, p. 81), position. These
positions are obviously not the only possible ones, but they represent
some of the main background assumptions of much empirical research
on the EU. Drawing the rough contours of the implicit premiums and
Exploring the Political Ontology of European Integration
27
taboos that define acceptable scholarly frameworks will reveal some of the
weaknesses of current EU research. It will also offer ammunition for some
in-depth critique of social scientific research more broadly (see Flyvbjerg
2001 for some stimulating ideas). This discussion is necessarily of preliminary character given the limited space available. There are several reasons why even the most empirically minded scholar should ‘do ontology’
(Wendt 1999, p. 370). First, although there are complex and evolving
interrelations between these levels, ontology logically precedes epistemology and methodology. Therefore, an ontological reflection grounds reflection on knowledge or methods. Different ontological frameworks tend
toward different objects and methods. Accepting that certain objects such
as social networks form the basis of political action (ontological ‘choice’)
will influence the research questions that will be considered important
(such as the impact of informal networks on political decision making)
(epistemological choice) as well as the methods (quantitative methods)
that will be used to achieve results (methodological choice).
It is not surprising that in the methodological division of labor between
different approaches, exclusive ontologies have traditionally been specialized in quantitative research methods, whereas inclusive approaches have
tended to specialize in qualitative research techniques. The research questions have of course also been very different. There is, however, a growing
interest in combining the two, and thus attempting to break the ‘ontological commitment’ of exclusive frameworks in which an ontological
position fits with certain types of knowledge and methodologies and the
straightjacket imposed by the dominance of quantifying approaches. This
has been the case for many constructivists who use a variety of research
techniques such as fieldwork (Carter 2009 and Kauppi 2005), archival
work (Madsen 2006) and in-depth interviewing (Beauvallet 2007;
Landorff 2016), for instance. However, influence between ontology, epistemology and methodology is not unidirectional from ontology to epistemology and methodology (Hay 2006). Rather, and this is an important
characteristic of reflexive approaches, it is bidimensional, as developments in empirical research also influence ontological reflection (as in
this analysis).
The second reason for ‘doing ontology’ is that it encourages critical
reflexive learning rather than prescriptive path dependency. It promotes
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N. Kauppi
the questioning of accepted dogma and ways of doing, of making the
implicit explicit. It is thus a necessary and integral part of every scholar’s
work. Third, while the principles elaborated here might seem too simple
from an empirical point of view, they have the merit of drawing general
direction lines for the development of research. They can function as
Kantian regulative ideas in the formulation of research problems. Fourth,
one of the main points of this text is that ontological ‘choices’ involve not
only knowledge but rather power/knowledge in Foucault’s sense. While
producing knowledge on political reality, scholars shape (to varying
degree and effect) what they are describing. For scholars, it is important
to understand the effects of their discourses and activities. Fifth, ontological reflection is a necessary part of the collective reflection on what it
means to do social science in today’s world when social science is increasingly challenged by the ‘hard’ sciences. What kinds of, often unconscious,
internal forces are at play? (see for instance Keating 2009 for a discussion)
This research perspective contributes to a more developed institutionalism that concentrates on the interaction of agents and institutions (see
Scharpf 1999; Mayntz and Scharpf 2001), a dimension that has been
neglected in institutionalist research on political institutions (Peters
1999, p. 70). Recent social scientific studies that focus from a similar
research perspective on the interaction between individuals and institutions and mobilize a reflexive ontological framework that tries to account
for the multiple feedbacks involved in research include works on a variety
of European power elites, Members of the European Parliament
(Beauvallet 2007), European civil servants (Georgakakis and de Lassalle
2007), regional elites (Kull 2008) and lawyers (Madsen 2006; Vauchez
2008). In this chapter, I will first discuss ontology in general, and then
move to a more thorough analysis of some texts that are based on the
exclusive ontological framework to finish with a discussion of an inclusive framework.
Ontology
By ontology is meant the interpretation of the basic constituents of the
world of experience (cf. Heidegger 1996). In philosophy, ontology is
contrasted with the ontic that which concerns the real world understood
Exploring the Political Ontology of European Integration
29
as the physical or more broadly the empirical world. The basic constituents of existence have a foundational status, and ontology involves the
basic categories of being and existence and the standards that have to be
met for something to fully exist (being of being). Following Taoist philosophy, Wittgenstein stated that ontology forms the hinges of our ordinary thoughts, the riverbed within which our thoughts flow (Wittgenstein
1969, §§97–99, 341–3). If the ontological and the ontic can be analytically separated from one another, in the real world the ontological comes,
so to speak, out of the pores of the ontic. In distinction to the (partly)
physical or material character of the ontic, the ontological as the metaphysical dimension of reality is invisible and weightless (for a sophisticated discussion see Searle 1995, pp. 4–5).
It would be an understatement to say that ontological ‘choices’ (for
want of a better term as they are not choices because they are assumed or
presupposed and not explicitly selected and motivated) have political
effects. They are eminently political or even better metapolitical ‘choices’
as they structure as core-imposed limits (Collingwood 1994; Mäki 2001,
p. 6) at the implicit level of presuppositions, the scope of action and the
constitutional framework of social arenas (see Bourdieu 1991; Buchanan
1991; Vanberg 2005, p. 23). In ordinary circumstances, this ‘predefinition’ is not put into question, and the distinction between ontology and
research practice is not made. Extraordinary circumstances are needed.
Although it forms, using phenomenological parlance, the background
beliefs (Husserl) and shared perceptions necessary for action (Schütz), the
‘predefinition’ of political reality is necessarily fueled by belief and not
knowledge. There are no ‘solutions’ to ontological questions: ontological
‘choices’ cannot be empirically falsified (Hay 2006, p. 87). Precisely
because the ontological preformatting of political reality is the condition
of existence of the political in the ordinary sense of the term, the ontological is depoliticized (Mouffe 1994; Palonen 2006; Zizek 2000). A
­constitutive conceptual division between the ontological and the ‘real’
(the ontic) diffuses the political stakes of the ontological domain. Further,
the political world is ontically vague and its contours not clear (Castoriadis
1975). Because ontological presuppositions are pacified and they apply to
a world that is opaque and vague, they play a key structuring role in the
categorization of reality, its production and reproduction. The purpose of
this chapter is to temporarily politicize the ontological dimension of EU
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N. Kauppi
studies, to put into question its power to determine the real via a reflexive
detour (for the always-preliminary character of this type of reflection, see
Derrida 1982) some of its unformulated presuppositions and its power to
determine the real.
This chapter is based on a close reading of very different recent, influential texts (Checkel 2005; Flockhart 2006; Schimmelfennig 2002,
2003; Trondal 2007) that reflect, in different ways, the broader ontological position sketched above. All these texts touch crucial issues of supranationalism, socialization and norms. In the next part, I will discuss some
aspects of these studies that pertain to ontology. I will analyze in more
detail Frank Schimmelfennig’s synthetic institutionalist approach that
has the merit of presenting in my mind one of the most sophisticated
frameworks for analysis of political action in the EU. Jeffrey Checkel’s
analysis of institutions and socialization clearly presents some of the central ontological presuppositions of mainstream constructivist research.
Flockhart presents a sophisticated model for norm transfer analysis, while
Trondal deepens the analysis of roles in the Commission. As I will show,
a radical questioning of the basic ontological setup of this and other
research is needed.
An Exclusive Ontological Framework
The basic presuppositions of the exclusive ontology are well known:
political institutions exist like natural entities, independent of their contexts (Odysseios 2002; Hay 2006, p. 92), and individuals are economic
rational actors. These conceptions resonate with deep-seated beliefs
scholars, politicians and ordinary citizens have of the political realm. This
ontological matrix, composed of scholarly and common sense implicit
ontological categorizations, forms the unquestioned backbone of the
prevalent political order. The intellectual challenge is not simply to
demystify the ontological order of the EU but rather to develop an adequate strategy of ontological resistance. Negating the dominant ontology
does not provide a means to escape the ontological matrix. It is merely an
indirect way of reinforcing ontological domination (see for a similar
point Derrida 1982).
Exploring the Political Ontology of European Integration
31
In the exclusive framework, institutions form the core of political reality (for a textbook example of this position, see Bomberg et al. 2008).
The institutional order constitutes a natural order that can be observed
and examined like other elements of the natural world such as rocks and
plants (for an elaboration see Searle 1995 and Moses and Knutsen 2007).
Institutions are detached both from the individuals operating in them
and from the individuals observing them. In this Weltanschauung, institutions are objectified, naturalized, anthropomorphized and quantified.
In a widely read textbook on EU politics, constructivism is qualified as
being ‘a philosophical, even ‘metaphysical’ position’ because it maintains
‘that our reality is constructed by human beings and reproduced in day-­
to-­day practice’ (Peterson et al. 2008, p. 229).
Political action is guided by rational individuals following a universal
exogenous conception of rationality that is close to a variation of economic rationality. Ontologically speaking individuals exist, like institutions, individually, separated from one another as Leibnizian monads.
The world is organized in a dichotomous fashion into the rational and
the irrational. Political action is rational, socialization irrational. Interests
are rational, identity irrational. Science cannot study the irrational.
Therefore, socialization and identity are not privileged objects of research.
In this exclusive logic science is neutral, as are facts. Science and the absolute observer merely objectify reality that exists ‘out there’ following a
dichotomous logic (either–or, rational–irrational, objective–subjective,
national–supranational and so on). Political reality is thus empirical non-­
metaphysical, waiting to be analyzed by the observer. This ontological
position is visible even in the most sophisticated constructivist works.
In his ‘synthetic institutionalist approach’, Frank Schimmelfennig
(2003) seeks to bridge the gap between a rationalist and a constructivist
account of preferences, revealing in the process elements of a solid
exclusive ontological framework. Schimmelfennig’s approach can be
­
described as a rationalist one topped with a thin layer of constructivism
and wrapped up in a second, thick layer of rationalism. Following rationalist institutionalism, he argues that agents in the EU act ‘strategically
on the basis of exogenous specific policy preferences’, but they do so
within a community environment defined by its ethos and a high interaction density. However, ‘institutions constrain the choices and behavior of
32
N. Kauppi
self-­interested actors but do not constitute their identity and interests’
(Schimmelfennig 2003, p. 161). Basing his approach on the works of sociologist Erving Goffman (see also Schimmelfennig 2002), Schimmelfennig
argues for a sequencing of rationalist and constructivist propositions in an
analysis of EU policy issues.
In his empirical analysis of the eastern enlargement of the EU,
Schimmelfennig combines a ‘rationalist’ account of preferences and logics of action that is followed by a constructivist explanation of interaction
dynamics and outcome. In other words, the enlargement preferences of
the EU member states can be explained by the preferences of these and
not by the community ethos of the EU that, however, prevents those reticent to enlargement from sabotaging the process. In Schimmelfennig’s
analysis, the enlargement preferences of the EU member states and not
the conventions regulating interaction in the community environment
determined EU enlargement.
In Schimmelfennig’s synthetic institutionalist approach, institutions
are presented in an objectified and disembodied form. Institutions are
not only exterior to individual agents but also quasi material in terms of
modes of existence (see also Trondal 2007). Further, they are reified and
anthropomorphized, presented as having wills of their own. They are the
central dramatis personae of European integration and European politics.
In this ontological framework of European integration, agents are the
states or the Commission for instance (for a similar ontological position
in this respect in IR see for instance Moravcsik 1999). This projection
from the individual to the institution is a major problem in
Schimmelfennig’s adaptation of Goffman’s sociological framework, in
which agents are individuals, not institutions. In fact, an analogous process took place in Wendt’s social constructivist theory of IR (Wendt
1999), where Wendt projected individual-level analysis and
­presuppositions based on a reading of Erving Goffman and George
Herbert Mead onto to a ‘higher’ plane to analyze political institutions.
States are people too, Wendt famously stated (Wendt 1999, p. 215).
The problem is that agency is undertheorized in many constructivist
works, and consequently the object or target of socialization remains
unclear: is it the individual, the group or an institution/complex of institutions, or something else? (see for instance Flockhart 2006, p. 100) It is
Exploring the Political Ontology of European Integration
33
debatable whether we can analyze socialization in the same terms in the
case of individuals as conscious beings, motivated by feelings and emotions as well as strategic calculation, and institutions or states. Although
states can act, they do only if somebody, an individual or a person, acts in
its place and in its name. Therefore, the capacity of the state to act through
its government is mediated by all the persons or individuals implicated in
state action. Concepts such as socializer and socialize (Flockhart 2006,
p. 100) merely eradicate the specificities of different types of agents and
prevent the elaboration of a more complex understanding of social action.
The same ingrained intellectual habit of mixing the individual and
states or institutions is visible in other constructivist works that adopt
some elements of an exclusive ontological framework (for instance
Checkel 2005; Trondal 2007). In this substitution, institutions are transformed into objectified entities that have a rational mind of their own
following an asocial ‘economist’ interpretation of the human mind. It is
then logical that in this substantial ontology the preferences of the actors,
the states, are ‘not informed by collective identities, norms and other
ideas’ (Schimmelfennig 2003, p. 161). An asocial individual finds her or
his theoretical equivalent in an asocial institution. Institutions are examined without analysis of roles and the characteristics of those occupying,
and partly making them. Institutions seem to be doing everything by
themselves, endowed with inherent characteristics independent of their
context.
Schimmelfennig emphasizes that states do not change preferences
when deciding about EU enlargement. Preferences are thus fixed. Let us
assume for discussion’s sake that institutions such as the ‘community
environment’ do not change their identity and interests. This might however have to do more with the characteristics of the ‘community environment’ as conceptualized by Schimmelfennig than with preferences
independent of context. Because when we switch our focus to individual
agents and their socialization, a distinction has to be made between on
the one hand professional socialization and on the other hand socialization tout court. Individuals can act according to professional expectations or they can adopt the interests and identity of the organization in
which they operate. For instance, to an anti-European MEP (member of
the European parliament) professional integration into the European
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N. Kauppi
Parliament is necessary, but it might not involve socialization into
European values. Competent institutional behavior does not necessarily
require ideological commitment on the part of individuals occupying
certain roles (Beauvallet 2007). In fact, what can be observed in institutions such as the European Parliament or in local administration is an
inversed Weberian process of socialization, in which individuals integrate
the institutions, acquire certain professional skills and practices and only
later some of them commit themselves to the values the institution is supposed to represent and defend (European values, European democracy
and so on). This example demonstrates that if one adopted the perspective of differential social integration and examined individuals in relation
to the structural characteristics of institutional contexts, one might find
out that preferences can be fixed and variable at the same time.
According to Checkel in his groundbreaking text on institutions and
socialization (Checkel 2005), the initial ontological setup reproduces two
elements of an exclusive ontological framework, under theorized conceptions of socialization and of agency. In his discussion of the logic of
action, Checkel distinguishes following March and Olsen (see for instance
Olsen and March 2004) from one another the logic of consequences and
the logic of appropriateness, a dichotomy that has become deeply embedded in political science discourse and EU research. Socialization would
involve shifting away from the first one to the second (Checkel 2005,
pp. 804, 816). Checkel reproduces thus the distinction between calculation and socialization, or ‘conscious instrumental calculation … (and)
conscious role playing’ (Checkel 2005, p. 804). In reality, however, since
birth individuals are socialized in primary (family, early childhood) and
secondary institutions (school, professional world etc.), a distinction not
developed until recently in EU studies. Throughout their adult lives they
operate in a variety of institutional contexts or secondary worlds. For
instance, national civil servants can switch from national to supranational
contexts, from public administration to the financial world and so on.
Furthermore, individuals are always involved in several institutional
worlds simultaneously. From this perspective, the distinction between a
logic of consequences and a logic of appropriateness is misleading as individuals always operate in varying institutional contexts. There is no ‘institutionless’ social location. Consequently, what is central to individuals
Exploring the Political Ontology of European Integration
35
and groups is the management of roles and conflicts, an activity that
requires both calculation and (varying) emotional commitment. The
implicit ontological framework and more specifically the calculation/
socialization dualism prevent Checkel and others (see also Flockhart
2006, pp. 93–94; Trondal 2007) from developing an adequate theory of
agency that would include analysis of interests and identities in multiple,
evolving institutional contexts. This way the rationalities (and role conflicts) of socialization could be empirically assessed.
The basic problem has to do with the ontological framework that separates endogenous and exogenous factors from one another. The absence
of a dialectical approach can be found in other studies. For instance, in
his analysis of the Commission, Trondal separates following an either–or
logic from supranational and national roles, as if they were mutually
exclusive (Trondal 2007). It could be argued that all EU member states
are Europeanized and have developed a host of roles that are, to varying
degrees, both supranational and national (for analysis at the regional level
see for instance Kull 2008). In some cases, it might even be difficult to
distinguish one from the other, as in those policy areas where European
and national interests are more or less fused. Ontologically speaking in
this evolving polity that is fundamentally incomplete objects are not
maximally consistent (for this ontological view see Jacquette 2002) (either
supranational or national) but rather inconsistent (to varying degrees
both supranational and national).
Largely because of their implicit ontological framework, these scholars
reproduce a dualistic conception of reality in which individual preference
formation is independent of the social sphere in which these agents operate (for a similar ontological position see Wendt 1999). This ontological
dualism characteristic of the exclusive ontological framework prevents a
deeper empirical scrutiny of the interaction between agents and the EU
environment, of roles, of political institutions and of the complicity
between the individual and his/her habitat in terms of knowledge and
action. The mutual constitution of society and individual dear to so many
protagonists of a reflexive ontology (Berger 1963; Berger and Luckmann
1966; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992; Elias 1983; Giddens 1986) is transformed into a rather basic schema according to which, in the end and
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N. Kauppi
paradoxically, individuals create institutions, but institutions have little
effect on them.
The inclusive ontological framework that I will briefly present next
brings to the fore of the analysis institutions as embodied entities involving individual and collective action. Ontological structuralism, relationalism and postnaturalism are proposed as an alternative to ontological
individualism, substantialism and naturalism.
An Inclusive Ontological Framework
The inclusive or reflexive framework offers a set of powerful counter-­
presuppositions to the exclusive framework. The dichotomous logic that
pervades the exclusive framework is substituted with a relational approach
that includes the extremes (after all, we cannot get rid of concepts) but
introduces shades of gray, an empirically more fruitful position. It presents a more comprehensive approach that does not a priori rule out some
dimensions of scholarly reflection, and is open to the development of
alternative ontological frameworks. The observer as the producer of a
metalanguage is not absolute, but rather she/he is tied to reality emotionally, socially and politically (see Adam et al. 1990, for an opposite view
see Mulkay 1981).
In contrast to the exclusive framework, reality is not natural. There is
always choice and agency (Berger 1963). Political reality consists of interdependent people, groups and institutions. It is symbolic-physical. For
instance, the European Commission is composed of a complex set of
material and symbolic elements. Most of political reality is symbolic,
immaterial and virtual, but it requires physical props, individuals, actions,
stationery, buildings and the like to really exist. Reality is co-(re)produced
by people as groups. The inclusive ontological position developed here
emphasizes the ties between the macro and the micro, institutions and
power and actions of individuals and groups in more or less structured
social spheres. Constrained by webs of relationships, these arenas of political competition evolve unevenly (see Elias 1983). This is clear for instance
in the case of the European Parliament and the European multilevel parliamentary field (Crum and Fossum 2009) in which it operates. Individual
Exploring the Political Ontology of European Integration
37
politicians have to adapt to the evolving position of this institution vis-à-­
vis national parliaments and also other major European institutions: the
Commission and the Council. This complex web of interrelationships
conditions the ‘endogenous’ development of the European Parliament,
issues such as the power resources available to the institution, the committees that will be the most prized, the strategies various groups will
mobilize to adapt and improve their political position and so on.
In an inclusive ontological framework, the dualism between rationalism and constructivism in EU studies can be temporarily overcome.
Rationalism and constructivism can be combined, but not sequentially,
in a theory of agency that has been missing in constructivist literature.
Instead of arguing that preference formation is exogenous to institutions, which makes studying contexts irrelevant, or of maintaining the
opposite extreme stance according to which the logic of action is always
endogenously formed (cf. for instance Douglas 1986), which would
make comparing contexts difficult, this interpretation argues that the
formal aim or logic of action is the same in all social spheres and is therefore exogenous to institutions but that the substantive logic of action is
endogenous to institutions. The formal logic consists, for agents, of
acquiring the resources that are, in their eyes, the most valued. These
resources can be political power for politicians, financial profits for businessmen or intellectual recognition for academics, for instance. These
agents are all then engaged in a semicontrolled competition for values
that are prized in their spheres of action (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992;
Weber 1968; Waltzer 1983) and values that motivate their action and
give it meaning.
In other words, the formal and teleological logic of accumulation does
not explain what kinds of actions and values these agents engage in or
even what are the goals of their actions. The formal level of analysis (for
analysis see Meyer et al. 1997; Beckfield 2006) has to be linked to the
actual practices of the agents involved. The substantive logic of their
actions, the type of actions they engage in, where and when, with whom,
is dependent on the chronotopic (Bakhtin 1981; Bakhtin and Voloshinov
1983) or figurational (Elias 1983), that is, the temporal and structural
characteristics of the spheres in which they operate and on the ontological
frameworks that structure their action. Their preferences are endogenously
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N. Kauppi
formed in the sense that what they aim at depends on various historical
and structural factors that structure their sphere of action. Cultural conventions that have ontological status exist in terms not only of the means
through which certain resources can be acquired but also of exactly what
will be the most valued resource that most individuals in a sphere of
action will struggle to attain at a specific point in space-time. In a nutshell, in this inclusive ontological framework and theory of agency, the
formal logic of action is exogenous, but the substantive logic of action is
endogenous.
As we have seen, the dominant exclusive ontological framework that
has colonized rationalist and constructivist research alike creates additional problems by separating interest from value and the strategic calculation of the agents from socialization, which would not involve
calculation. In the alternative reflexive ontological framework, however,
individuals have an interest in some value more than in others. For
instance, academics might systematically pursue symbolic recognition by
peers instead of monetary awards. Individuals socialized in certain actions
and preferences like engaging in scholarly activities calculate (‘It might
be better to publish here’) and intuitively play out their role, without
even separating socialization from calculation. Competent role-playing
requires role management, which presupposes a capacity to evaluate
appropriate behavior and to solve conflicts through an assessment of
risks. The ‘end point’ of socialization is externalization that is action in
the world (Berger and Luckmann 1966), and not internalization as
Checkel argues (Checkel 2005, p. 817). There is still a long way from the
internalization of a role to action in the world or the externalization of
the role, as the latter will depend on the varying institutional contexts in
which the individual operates. In summary then, action is both endogenous and exogenous, involving bounded rationality and calculation of
costs and benefits, and not either endogenous or exogenous, or rational
or nonrational (see for instance Carter 2009 for sophisticated empirical
analysis).
In order to be specific about what the goals of different agents are,
what will be crucial empirically speaking will be the delimitation of the
sphere of action, the context if you like, in which individuals operate.
This delimitation is crucial because, to a certain extent, it will determine
Exploring the Political Ontology of European Integration
39
the limits of the playing field and thus the ontological space that will, in
part, condition the beings with which individuals will have to deal with.
To determine this, equating like Schimmelfennig does ‘the community
environment’ with ‘social structure’ is too vague. We need to specify the
collective ends of the actions in question and the kinds of institutional
figurations, as complex layered structures of joint actions (Searle 1995),
that mold these actions. If we talk about European energy policy, for
instance, we will have national governments, European institutions, private and public agents and so on. Certain technological constraints will
frame the actions of these individuals. All these agents will be involved in
a political struggle the goal of which is the determination of the EU’s
energy policy. The controlled competition in this policy sphere will be
regulated and constituted by various conventions and norms of varying
strength. These institutions and the social roles that are constitutive of
these institutions have specific characteristics that the exclusive ontological framework, because of its emphasis on institutions as objectified entities, tends to minimize.
The advantage of such inclusive and relational theoretical understanding of rationality is that it enables the scholar to detect the similarities
between rationality and action in different social spheres while at the
same time being sensitive to their historical and structural variations. A
more inclusive ontological framework makes possible a more complex
relational analysis of preference formation and institutionalization. A
point has to be made about the force of institutions. Society, or any structured sphere of action to be a bit more specific, is composed of institutions of varying effect. Some, like the legal system, are strongly codified
and ritualized, with coercive norms and roles. In the case of institutions
of this type, individuals are significantly shaped by institutional conventions and norms. Other institutions are weaker: their coercive force is
lesser (see for instance Olsen 2007, 2009 for analysis). But even then,
exogenous factors are not totally exterior to the institutions. They might
have to do with the individual ‘baggage’ of occupiers of institutional roles
in these institutions, a ‘baggage’ that is tied to previous institutional roles
in other institutional settings (for analysis see for instance Page 1997).
Exogenous factors can then play a key endogenous structuring function.
40
N. Kauppi
In the case of strong institutions, those individuals who represent the
institutions in question will have to internalize institutional norms in
order to be competent representatives of the institution, in order for the
office to surpass the individual so to speak. A ‘flow’ Csikszentmihalyi
(1990) has to develop between individual and institution. This type of
‘flow’ can be observed among prime ministers representing their country
in the EU, for instance. When these individuals move from an institutional context that is strongly codified like a national political sphere into
a figuration like the ‘EU negotiating environment’ where they do not
have to abandon their role but are in fact encouraged to behave according
to it, they will obviously do so. Their preferences will be relatively stable,
like Schimmelfennig shows very well in his empirical study. But the point
minimized by most institutionalists adhering to an exclusive ontological
framework is that these preferences can change because the individuals
representing the institution in question change as a result of an electoral
defeat for instance.
For instance, French–German relations have been mediated by the
relationships between their respective leaders. The close personal relations
between Francois Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl have significantly shaped
not only the relations between France and Germany but also the EU
(Ross 1995; see also Fligstein 2001), providing one of the conditions for
the development of the single market. Today, the relationship between
top politicians such as the French president and the German chancellor
continue to shape not the just the relationship between these member
states but the EU more broadly. Consequently, the definition of national
interest cannot be just a fixed preference. In this example, certain individuals represent the state and speak in its name. This ventriloquism is
institutionalized and regulated. Only certain individuals have access to
this collective resource. It is difficult to see how an ontological framework
that does not permit the differentiation between institutions and those
representing these institutions could possibly provide an adequate ­analysis
of variations in policies and, thus, an understanding of the forces that
shape institutionalization, the temporal and synchronic variations in
political institutions, and politics more broadly.
In the inclusive, reflexive ontological framework advocated here, if one
abandons the duality individual-institution one does not need to separate
Exploring the Political Ontology of European Integration
41
interest from norm and role, or the objective from the subjective. To fully
exist, institutions need to have an objective existence that is sustained by
subjective investment (for analysis of the political effects of inner resignation, see de Certeau 1998). A similar kind of comment can be made
about the analysis of norms. Norms are institution specific, and they vary
depending on positions and roles in evolving institutional spheres. The
effect of norms is never uniform, contrary to what scholars adhering to an
exclusive ontological framework seem to assume. And if norms, such as
those relative to the promotion of common European values, are relatively weak in a specific institutional figuration, it does not mean they do
not exist. The uses politicians will make of these values will depend on
contextual factors such as elections or significant political or economic
events (for analysis of the temporal variation of European values see for
instance Duchêne and Frognier 2002).
Conclusions
I have tried to show in this chapter that ontology matters. The exclusive
ontological framework and the dualisms it reproduces (objective–subjective, individual–institution, socialization–calculation, interest–norm,
supranational–national and so on.) outlined briefly here prevent a great
deal of research from developing a more complex, ‘thick’ empirical
description of EU integration. This ontological position has serious consequences in the real world. Individuals and institutions are isolated from
one another, and there is little or no interaction between the two.
Institutions are automatons and actors interchangeable. A more suitable,
inclusive and reflexive ontological framework can deepen existing research
questions and generate new ones. It can provide a more sophisticated
account of identity issues, of the links between roles and institutions, and
of processes of institutionalization more broadly. By adopting the point
of view of the individual living in society, it provides new research questions, such as those that have to do with the influence of perceptions in
decision making, of the effects of social characteristics (gender, education, nationality etc.) and group morphology on institutional development, or the interaction of spheres and political action.
42
N. Kauppi
The problem with the ‘as if ’ theorizing (Checkel 2005) of much EU
research is that in practice institutions do not do anything by themselves.
They do not act by themselves, they do not have free wills, they do not
reason. Individuals and groups do things in their place and in their name.
By creating a parallel world in which institutions and states exist like
asocial, economically rational individuals (homo economicus), and where
atomized individuals are separated from the institutional spheres in which
they act, these ‘as if ’ theorists evacuate from the realm of inquiry a host
of fundamental issues of action and political power.
Another characteristic of the exclusive ontological framework sketched
here is to project presuppositions concerning individual human beings to
the level of political institutions such as member states and supranational
institutions. One consequence of this projection is the blurring of the
lines of public and political responsibility. As institutions are not analyzed in relation with individuals and groups who at a specific point in
time have the right or obligation to speak in their name, the mechanisms
conditioning public policies are left untouched and even mystified.
Institutions are considered as being equally institutionalized or noninstitutionalized, thus preventing analysis of the level of institutionalization,
of the strength of the roles they inhabit, of institutions as embodied
structures of rules and norms, of institutional logics and so on. A great
deal of this research moreover seems to consider, following its ontological
presuppositions, that all agents are equally reflexive, or which comes to
the same nonreflexive. Agents are not analyzed in terms of differential
power resources, of which reflexivity (self-objectification and self-­
knowledge, learning, adaptation and so on) would constitute one source,
or in terms of differential social integration. If, from the outset, an inclusive ontological framework was adopted and individuals would be considered social beings, they would never pursue just their self-interest.
Finally, social science research is not conceived as a political world-­
constructing activity that involves subjects and objects that are in an
interactive relationship but as a descriptive, skin-deep objectivizing exercise that reinforces a functionalist, apolitical image of politics.
In diffused and uneven ways, EU studies are still ruled by ontological
individualism, substantialism and naturalism. I have sketched in this chapter an alternative, inclusive ontological framework based on ontological
Exploring the Political Ontology of European Integration
43
structuralism, relationalism and postnaturalism. Objects of knowledge do
not exist independently of their contexts but rather in complex webs of
interrelationships. Scholars are not autonomous vis-à-­vis the reality they
are describing. Further work is needed. The symbolic and practical structures of the EU’s political ontology have to be further scrutinized. New
research questions have to be generated on the basis of a periodical reevaluation of the implicit assumptions and core beliefs of social science research
(dualism, antirelationalism, the absolute observer).
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3
Analyzing Integration
Drawing partly on empirical and theoretical work on European integration, in this chapter, I will propose some elements for a structural constructivist conception of integration. Integration will be conceptualized
as a key part of differentiation and stratification processes, more specifically of professional specialization and the formation of a variety of political, cultural and social hierarchies and spaces. I argue that this sociological
perspective has the potential to provide us with a more informative picture of IR and regional integration that challenges intergovernmentalist,
neofunctionalist and social constructivist accounts (see Haas 1958;
Deutsch 1962; Nye 1968; Baldwin 1997 and Moravcsik 1998 for examples). These are based on sociologically weakly developed conceptions of
agency, the state and power. In the mainstream literature, agency is often
conceived of as institutional agency, the state and power being objectified
in materialized forms. States exist and act ‘out there’ as relatively homogeneous and unitary, quasiphysical entities. Some scholars analyze
­
institutions such as the European Commission or European Union
member-states as parts of systems or regimes and endow them with
human qualities such as motives, anger and frustration.
© The Author(s) 2018
N. Kauppi, Toward a Reflexive Political Sociology of the European Union,
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71002-0_3
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N. Kauppi
But we all know that states and institutions do not do anything by
themselves. It is individuals and groups that represent collective interests
and act in their name, more or less successfully. Counter-reactions to
anthropomorphic constructions exist. In some social constructivist or
poststructuralist accounts, there simply is no agency. State and power are
diluted into discourses and social conventions. For some more ‘realist’
scholars, to argue like social constructivists do that social reality is constructed by human beings is a ‘metaphysical or philosophical position’
that is not really scientific (Bomberg et al. 2008, p. 18). For them, social
reality and its political institutions seem to have dropped from the sky.
The effects of these conceptions are disastrous as they dissociate individuals from meaning structures, groups, institutions and policies, thereby
preventing an informed understanding of the dynamics of European
regional integration.
One of the main advantages of the alternative account of integration
presented here is that it does not force the scholar to choose between
state-centric or supranational visions of IR or European Union politics or
more broadly between rationality (realism, neorealism or the logic of
consequentiality) and identity (institutionalism, constructivism or the
logic of appropriateness) (see March and Olsen 2004 for an account of
this position). In fact, the structural constructivist approach can be seen
as a radical critique of these artificial distinctions and an attempt to formulate a sociological alternative (see Chap. 2). According to this sociological position, individuals always operate in a more or less goal-oriented
manner in more or less structured institutional and social environments.
Individuals are never either totally exterior to these institutions like the
logic of consequentiality assumes nor totally integrated into them like the
logic of appropriateness argues. They are always both to varying degrees
depending on their resources and the features of the multiple contexts in
which they are embedded.
In this chapter, I first analyze some of the problems in IR and European
Studies as to the analysis of integration. I then proceed to a discussion of
the concept of integration in Bourdieu’s work and of some dangers of
doing research on the European Union. In the last part, I examine the
methodological tools a structural constructivist approach can mobilize in
an analysis of the European Parliament.
Analyzing Integration
51
roblems with Integration in IR and European
P
Studies
In a structural constructivist framework, regional European integration
refers to the institutionalization of large and small groups through political struggles that aim to define and reproduce legitimate principles (ideas
and practices) of domination (see Kauppi 2005, pp. 67–87; Favell and
Guiraudon 2011; Adler-Nissen 2013). In this relatively neutral, Weberian
definition, these principles can range from relatively narrow professional
interests to universal moral principles such as equity, human rights and
responsibility toward future generations (see Kauppi and Madsen 2013).
This position partly challenges one of the most influential definitions of
integration developed by Ernst Haas in 1958. By integration he meant
the process whereby political actors in several distinct national settings
are persuaded to shift their loyalties, expectations and political activities
toward a new center, whose institutions possess or demand jurisdiction
over the preexisting national states (Haas 1958, p. 16).
In contrast to Haas’s functionalist definition of integration, the structural constructivist definition underlines the crucial role played by power
on the one hand and of ideas as practices on the other hand. Another
influential definition of integration is the one given by Karl Deutsch. He
defines the results of integration in the following way (quoted in Nye
1968, p. 857): ‘…institutions and practices strong enough and widespread enough to assure, for a “long” time, dependable expectations of
“peaceful change” among [the] population’.
Karl Deutsch’s analysis of security communities involves states and
relationships between states. But there is no reason to restrict the analysis
to nation-states. Community formation is a generic social process that is
both ideational and material, involving both symbolic and material interests. Indeed, in the European context, this involves varying groups at all
levels of the evolving European political field as a site of action (for specific recent examples, see Gornitzka 2010 for higher education and
Kelemen and Tarrant 2011 for several policy sectors such as telecommunication and pharmaceutical products).
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N. Kauppi
Integration always involves historical and dialectical inclusion and
exclusion processes of individuals and groups. The dialectical interaction
between consensus and conflict as a key dimension of integration and
exclusion has until now been insufficiently analyzed. Conflict scholars
have concentrated on political conflict, forgetting analysis of consensus
(and topics such as negotiation and compromise) as a condition of possibility of socially organized physical and symbolic conflict.
A central concept in sociology, political science, international relations
and European studies, the concept of integration has numerous, conflicting definitions (see Nye 1968 for a discussion in IR). In the literature, it
has been conceptualized as national and more lately supranational integration (see for instance, Deutsch 1962, p. 13). Integration can mean
‘assimilation’, ‘addition’, or ‘combination’. It can also signify ‘incorporation’ or ‘union’. Following French sociologist Marcel Mauss, integration
‘holds everything together’ (Mauss 1997, p. 772). Like society, it is that
which ‘holds’; it is a gel, like meat jelly, to use Mauss’s metaphor. The
opposite of integration, crisis, is precisely the moment when things do
not hold together anymore, it is a process of disintegration, defreezing or
excessive conflict (see also for discussion Lipset 1962). These images
bring us to basic sociological processes of differentiation and stratification that evolve in any political community. While Mauss’s analysis is
descriptive, integration has come to signify more than just an objective
social process. For many sociologists, integration describes a certain normative correspondence between society, state and nation that is based
on socialization in a nation-state-wise context (Wieviorka 2008, p. 223).
Integration refers then to the formation of citizens. The mental image the
concept of integration conveys is that of two asymmetric entities and of
the process of mixing or combination of these entities, be they individuals, groups, institutions or discourses. In a situation of power asymmetry,
this process entails an addition of some elements from the ‘weaker’ entity
to the ‘stronger’ one or an assimilation process from one to the other
(Deutsch 1962). In all cases, the mental image is one of a linear, relatively
peaceful process that is not of course totally free of violence as the cases
Deutsch analyses demonstrate.
European integration is the implicit or explicit reference in most discussions of integration in IR although there are also works on integration
Analyzing Integration
53
in Asia (ASEAN) and Latin America (MERCOSUR). Joseph Nye has
attempted to liberate discussion of integration from its teleological format as expressed in the studies by Deutsch and his associates. Instead of
analyzing integration in terms of levels, he proposes to examine it in
terms of types, such as economic, social and political integration (Nye
1968, p. 858). In this way, integration is broken down into components
that can be separately analyzed. Social integration refers, in the European
case, to the formation of transnational societies, and political integration,
to the formation of transnational political interdependencies. A rich literature exists on the links between integration and community, especially
Karl Deutsch and his works Political Community at the International Level
and Political Community and the North Atlantic Area on security communities. The level of analysis is the nation-state and the grouping of nation-­
states into larger communities. Inspired by this work, several scholars in
IR such as Donald J. Puchala have further developed this approach. The
concept of security communities resurfaced in the 1990s with the volume
Security Communities edited by Emmanuel Adler and Michael Barnett
(1998).
Other IR scholars who have revived the concept of integration include
Ole Waever and Andrew Linklater. Vincent Pouliot has further developed this notion in his analysis of security communities and the practice
turn (cf. Pouliot 2010).
The European studies literature has developed on the one hand as
intergovernmentalist approaches and on the other hand as supranational
approaches (for an overview of the main positions, see Rosamond 1999).
These have been supplemented by the social constructivist approach,
which can be divided into historical and sociological versions (see especially Christiansen et al. 2001). The structural constructivist approach
combines elements of all of these approaches but is closest to some social
constructivist works (see for instance, Schimmelfennig 2002). The originality of the structural constructivist approach boils down to the following. In contrast to most approaches, structural constructivism presents a
contextual or better holistic approach to politics that seeks to analyze
phenomena in a relational fashion as relatively homogeneous entities,
such as the Finnish political field for instance. Any social entity derives its
value from the evolving social network in which it is embedded. For
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N. Kauppi
instance, before Finland’s integration into the European Union, the
European Parliament was not on the radar of Finnish politicians. It had
no value for Finnish politicians in terms of career development. But after
Finland joined the European Union in 1995, the European Parliament
started playing a role in their political strategies, challenging the national
parliament. When evaluating the relative value of a legislative career in
the national parliament after 1995, one has to take into account the existence of the European parliament as a challenger to purely national political careers.
While sensitive to the materiality of political reality, the symbolic character of political action is another key element of a structural constructivist approach. Symbolic structuration, that is, for instance the meanings
individuals assign to a political process, is crucial in understanding of
political integration and international relations. Concerning the European
Parliament, research has shown that its status varies from member-state
to member-state and political party to political party (see Navarro 2009).
The argument that the European Parliament is a secondary institution
and the elections to the European Parliament secondary elections has to
be nuanced (Reif and Schmitt 1980). While it is the case for politicians
from major parties, these secondary elections are primary elections for all
those parties and movements that do not succeed in winning seats in
national elections but whose candidates get elected to the European
Parliament (Shemer-Kunz 2013). Reasons for this are related to the electoral system. For these individuals and their political projects, the
European Parliament presents a life-saving power base that enables continued political action. Without a consideration of these ‘positive’ uses of
the European Parliament, a lot of contemporary domestic European politics cannot be understood.
The key interface for a sociological study of integration in the European
setting is that of the individual-group-institution. Individuals are always
members of various social groups. Informal and formal groups are embedded in various institutions. From an individual’s viewpoint, integration
takes the form of an interactive relationship with various groups (in-­
groups and out-groups for instance). Individuals will try to appropriate
for themselves certain ideas and values, such as that of being a European
and not national parliamentarian. Some MEPs might present themselves
Analyzing Integration
55
as representing European values, and not just ‘narrow’ national interests,
in areas like environmental protection or human rights for instance.
Integration is not then a top-down process or one of pure and simple
imposition of certain values or institutions from the supranational to the
national level for instance. It has to do with the formation of groups,
institutions and policies. At the most basic sociological and socio-­
psychological level, once they get in touch with European institutions,
individuals appropriate certain values, habits of thinking, patterns of
behavior and so on. Transformations can be observed even at the most
trivial level, in the clothing style of politicians, in their way of talking and
so on. This is because they have to adapt to the codes and customs of their
new in-groups (see Abélès 1990 for a fine analysis).
Integration in Bourdieu’s Work
The concept of integration is conspicuously missing in Pierre Bourdieu’s
work. Several reasons can explain this. First, in sociology, integration is a
concept developed by functionalist theorists, such as Emile Durkheim
and Talcott Parsons. Bourdieu’s ambition of creating his own distinctive
social theory might have prevented him from adapting concepts that had
been used by other scholars. This would have reduced the originality of
his own theory, an originality which is based on the redefinition of concepts such as field, habitus and strategy. Second, in the French context,
integration is a politically loaded term (Republican integration).
According to the Bachelardian idea of epistemological break central to
Bourdieu’s epistemological thinking, scholarly discourse has to develop
its own concepts to describe social reality, a reality that is not reducible to
common sense. In other words, scientific reality as constructed by the
scholar cannot be reduced to the discourses and rationalizations of agents.
Third, and most importantly for this chapter, integration refers to a consensus model of society (see for instance, Putnam 2000) whereas Bourdieu
is a proponent of a conflict model of society. As for Bourdieu, social science is a combat sport; society cannot be about integration, discussion,
compromise or Habermasian discursive rationalism for that matter.
Coalition building, a key point in Deutsch’s figure of ‘integrative b­ ehavior’
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N. Kauppi
(Deutsch 1962, p. 83), plays a minor role on Bourdieu’s social scene.
Following Marx in Bourdieu’s framework, the best arguments are always
those of the most powerful, and the ruling ideas are those of the ruling
class. They are imposed through symbolic violence. The powerless, or
better, dominated, be they workers, women, novices or children for
instance, have no other choice but to reproduce dominant values, legitimize dominant discourses and emulate dominant models (a particularly
illustrative case is Bourdieu’s analysis of masculine domination, Bourdieu
1998). While Bourdieu did not use the concept of integration, my contention is that the idea of integration was as central in his work as in any
other sociological work.
The Bourdieu-inspired perspective of sociology as a relationship
between dominant and dominated gives a too static and one-sided picture of power and political transformation, regional political integration
included. Reality is a lot messier, involving contradictory processes and
various temporalities, cooperation and conflict in diverse forms. This is
especially the case in the European Union, where, in contrast to national
settings such as France analyzed by Bourdieu, a multitude of highly
structured national political spaces are partly united by a more heterogeneous transnational space. Furthermore, in certain circumstances and a
longer historical perspective, the ‘weak’ can defeat the ‘strong’. Such
diverse authors as Vaclav Havel and Michel de Certeau have emphasized
the power of the powerless and the role of inner conviction in countering
domination (Havel 1985; Certeau 2002). Although they are dominated,
the powerless are not permanently powerless. The social checkerboard
evolves as do social dynamics. If dominated in one context, social mobility into another context might enable some individuals to reuse their
assets to better their situation. Furthermore, powerlessness can become
a resource under changing technological, economic and political circumstances. Individuals are not doomed to merely partake in the social
domination that is exerted on them, as Bourdieu argues. Homologies
between resources and power are perfect and eternal only on a sociologist’s
drawing board.
Analyzing Integration
57
Countering European Official Rhetoric
In official European rhetoric, European integration is the process and the
goal. It is a linear, teleological process that contains elements of inevitability. The challenge for scholarly discourse as metalanguage is to produce
a scientific discourse that reproduces the object languages (the discourses
of the agents of integration, of the public policies involved for instance)
without however being totally reduced to them. This requires keeping a
certain distance, a distance that enables the author to develop a scholarly
argument. In other words, scholarly interest has to dominate practical
interest. This is, however, not always the case in European studies. A lot
of research in European studies merely duplicates policy developments or
restates official institutional priorities. Whole specialty areas have developed in this way. Various explanations can be given to the attraction of
this discursive mimesis. The first one is that scholarly research is dependent on documentation provided by the formal institutions of European
integration. Alternative sources of information are often hard and even
impossible to come by. Certain domains like the policies of the European
Central Bank are virtually closed to outside observers. Certain research
techniques like document analysis in studies on the finances of the
European Union (see for instance, Strasser 1975) even demand a close
duplication of the sources. In this way, it reduces to a minimum the distance between meta- and object languages, transforming discursive proximity into scientific quality. In political science, official documents are
often used in conjunction with interviews of European Union and
national officials (Mangenot 1998; Adler-Nissen 2008; Beauvallet and
Michon 2010). Historians are totally dependent on access to archives in
European capitals and EU institutions (see for instance, the studies by
Knudsen 2009 and Rasmussen 2008). Second, the European Union
relies on outsiders for information concerning its own past and future
actions. The complex system of consultation is intended to provide the
Brussels bureaucracy with information it does not have and that it is
incapable of producing given the size of its administration. However, by
functioning as European Union sponsored, expert scholars easily become
coproducers of European Union policies and legitimizers of its policy
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N. Kauppi
outputs. Third, the European Union has developed a host of research
funding mechanisms such as the Framework Programmes and Marie
Curie Fellowships that attract social science scholars. In dire times, these
have provided an opportunity for younger and older scholars to continue
their careers or reinvent themselves. But at the same time, these financial
instruments promote certain types of research, always empirical and
linked with the integration process. For the European Union, research is
an investment that has to contribute to certain practical needs. For all
these reasons, European Union research easily becomes a legitimation
discourse in Max Weber’s sense.
A key problem is the vocabulary that is used by scholars and practitioners alike. Some of the terms like integration are used in both meta- and
object languages, that is by scholars studying the EU (and producing
metalanguages) and by the individuals, institutions and policies being
examined (and producing object languages). This leads to significant
confusion and the mixing of scholarly and political registers. The mere
usage of the term can politically legitimize the process and its goals, as
well as reproduce some of its latent slants. One way out of this confusion
is to redefine integration and to use it only in a more technical, social
scientific sense. Another complementary answer is to try to be self-­
reflexive about one’s own research, its conditions and effects, and encourage others to do the same.
Rethinking the European Parliament
A structural constructivist analysis does not only provide an alternative
perspective to analysis of the European Parliament. It also provides methodological tools for the scrutiny of power structures and processes of integration, that is processes of stratification and differentiation of political
power in evolving institutional configurations (Kauppi 2005; Landorff
2016). This involves analysis of political groups, committees and the role
of rapporteurs for instance. According to official European rhetoric, the
European Parliament is a unique political experiment in world history
and represents one of the brightest achievements of European integration. Its members are directly elected from the European Union’s
Analyzing Integration
59
­ ember-­
m
states. It is of course a paradox that while the European
Parliament has gained in political power, especially since the Lisbon
Treaty, it is still a relatively weak institution compared to the European
Commission and the European Council. Unknown by electors and
ignored by many national politicians, it stands as an example of the complexities of European regional political integration.
Over the years, the European Parliament has nevertheless come to represent an alternative political career path to some politicians. For instance,
I have shown that in France, female politicians have used the European
Parliament elections as a way to integrate the national political system
(see Kauppi 2005 and Beauvallet and Michon 2010 for details). Less
valued than domestic institutions, the European Parliament offered some
leading Socialist politicians, such as François Mitterrand, the opportunity to reward the increasing numbers of younger female politicians without causing an uproar among dominant male politicians. Presenting
these female politicians as candidates for the European Parliament and
not the National Assembly was a way to satisfy both groups. But as the
saying goes, what you throw out of the window comes back in through
the main door. It is no accident that currently Martine Aubry leads the
Socialist party and several prominent Socialist politicians are women.
Another political group that has benefited from the development of the
European Parliament has been regional and local politicians. Dominated
in the traditional national regime, the European Parliament has presented
them with a way to bypass the national political center and its power
structures and to tap on the financial and political resources of the
European Union. The career strategy of some local and regional politicians has resonated with the European Union’s attempts to create powerful ‘Euroregions’ that would find in Brussels an ally in their tug-of-war
with member-states.
Institutionally, the effects of European integration involve the transfer,
or better, translation into domestic political and administrative fields of a
variety of institutions and policies, a complex process documented in a
multitude of studies. However, the symbolic effects, the ways in which
formal transformations are interpreted and acted upon, differ a great
deal, depending on power relations and opportunity structures. Research
has shown that the political status of a seat in the European Parliament
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varies from country to country and from political party to political party.
In general, politicians from smaller member-states place a greater value
on the European Parliament than those from larger member-states, such
as the UK or France. Traditionally, French politicians have been skeptical
of the European Parliament. Because of the proportional election system,
politicians from smaller political parties are favored in the elections to the
European Parliament. Consequently, extremist political movements,
such as the French Front National (FN), have been well represented in the
European Parliament. In fact, without the European Parliament, FN’s
political weight in domestic politics would be very different. The
European Parliament has provided the Front National, and also leftist
movements like the Trotskyist Lutte Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR),
a supranational base from which to continue its political activities. The
European rescue of nationalist and extremist parties demonstrates that
the process of integration is not free of contradictions.
The uses individual politicians and political groups make of the opportunities opened up by European integration, its institutions and public
policies are the key questions of many structural constructivist studies.
‘Uses’ is defined quite broadly, mostly in an instrumental sense, but is
understood most of the time as practices related to professional career
development, to career patterns of politicians and administrators and to
the formation of a European, supranational body of political professionals. The link between institutions and the way individuals mold them is
in many ways a crucial research question in the sense that it links individuals with larger groups, institutions and public policies. Analytically
speaking, the aim is to analyze the positive or negative correlations
between these various levels, the social resources or assets that are promoted/delegitimized, the power structures that are created, and ideally, to
detect causal links between individual, group and policy formation. The
latter part of the research process is, of course, the most challenging one.
If we start with individuals, research explores what kinds of individual
characteristics are statistically typical in certain political and social groups
that operate in European institutions or in their vicinity. National cohorts
in the European Parliament might, in terms of how long their members
have served in the institution, show French MEPs serving some of the
shortest terms. Concerning the second level, research can explain which
Analyzing Integration
61
groups wield power in certain institutions or in certain parts of an institution. In the case of the European Parliament, this would involve analysis
of the changing functions of party groups, such as the EPP for instance.
Analysis can also focus on the formation of cabinets in the Commission
for instance, or on the evolving social characteristics of presidents of the
European Parliament. The third level of analysis involves the study of the
social determinants of policy outputs. What are the links between the
outputs, the power structures of institutions and the characteristics of
their position holders? For instance, does a long-term historical transformation in the educational backgrounds of position holders translate into
varying policy outputs? How does the increase in female politicians
change the European Parliament’s institutional practices and policy
outputs?
Scholars have studied these questions using mainly two complementary research techniques. The first one is quantitative and involves the
analysis of the social characteristics of social groups such as Members of
the European Parliament (MEPs) or European Commissioners (Ross
1995; Page 1997). The second research technique is interviews. The purpose of the interviews is to enable the scholar to fine-tune the quantitative data collected and to bring a subjective dimension into the research.
Ideally, the research process is thus characterized by a constant movement
between the quantitative and the qualitative, between objectification
through statistical or more broadly numerical methods and subjectification where the perspectives and valuations of individuals are related to
positions and institutional structures. A third dimension is the historical
one. Although necessary, introducing this dimension is complicated
essentially for reasons that have to do with the data. Collecting systematic
data can be in practice impossible, either because data is not available or
because collecting it would take too much time. Most of the research is
thus synchronic and not diachronic. This is of course a major lacuna as
an understanding of institutional development and its dynamic topography is crucial for analysis of its power structures and perimeters of action.
The most up-to-date study of MEPs is the one by Beauvallet and
Michon (Beauvallet and Michon 2010, see also Beauvallet et al. 2016).
More institutional studies include Costa’s and Navarro’s (Costa 2001;
Navarro 2009). The argument of Beauvallet and Michon’s study is that
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the European Parliament has become more autonomous vis-à-vis other
political institutions in domestic politics in the sense that career development in the European Parliament has become more dependent on social
resources internal to the European Parliament (for a similar analysis see
Kauppi 2005). By this they mean resources such as seniority, social capital, expertise and language skills. Seniority refers to the fact that candidates for top positions in the European Parliament bureau, in the
presidency or vice presidency of committees or groups cannot be novices
but have to have a certain experience working in the institution. They
have internalized the institution’s culture and developed a role as a representative of the institution (charisma of the institution). Social capital
refers to contacts and acquaintances in the institution. One has to know
the right people and one has to be known, a member of the in-group.
Expertise has to do with a recognized competence in a certain domain
that is relevant to the activities of the European Parliament. These can
include environmental issues or questions of human rights for instance.
Language skills have to do with knowledge of English, French and some
other European languages. In practice, English and to a lesser extent
French are the working languages in European Union institutions. Of
course, knowing rarer languages, such as Swedish, can be a considerable
advantage in certain conditions. According to Beauvallet and Michon,
these resources have become necessary for access to leadership positions
in the European Parliament. In this sense, for the last nearly 40 years, a
stratification process of resources has taken place in the institutional
development of the European Parliament.
The study of leadership positions through quantitative data shows the
increasing importance of properties emanating from involvement and
action within the parliamentary space itself (seniority, investments in the
institution and its organs on a long-term basis). These properties seem
ever more decisive in the access to the main positions of the European
Parliament. These transformations attest to a process of Europeanization
of the parliamentary elite: MEPs earn their positions in the European
Parliament by acquiring specialized resources. The control of these different elements and the progressive acquisition of a real practical sense of
Europe give individuals a fraction of this institutional charisma that is
necessary for laying claim to the exercise of internal power.
Analyzing Integration
63
In contrast to these internal resources, they also analyze relationally
the usages of external resources that include experience in the National
Assembly or in domestic governments. Whereas in the 1980s external
resources were the key to successful careers in the European Parliament,
since the 2000s this has changed. In the 1980s, many MEPs had had
previous experience in the lower chamber and had been ministers in
governments. They were part of the domestic political establishment. For
the French case, this meant being integrated in political institutions in
the capital, Paris, the only place that really mattered for politicians. For
individual French politicians, a term in the European Parliament was not
necessarily valued. It was not a career move and was thus less valuable
than a term in the National Assembly. In other words, since 1979, when
the European Parliament began to be chosen directly, the relative value
of external resources in career development has dropped whereas the
value of internal resources has increased. For instance, 45 percent of
MEPs in the first term (1979–84) had national parliamentary and government experience. For the fifth term (1999–2004), this figure had
dropped to 28 percent. This development has been simultaneous with an
uneven increase in the political power of the European Parliament vis-àvis other European institutions, chiefly the European Commission but
also the European Council. Especially after the Lisbon Treaty, the
European Parliament is poised to play a more central role in the democratic development of the European Union. Although abstention rates in
European Parliament elections are still relatively high, many see the
European Parliament as representing the people whereas the Commission
is a supranational bureaucracy, and the Council a collection of government ministers. Other transformations analyzed by Beauvallet and
Michon include a stabilization of the MEP mandate, as well as the internationalization and feminization of the personnel of the European
Parliament.
Similar studies have been and are being conducted by other scholars
on the European Commission, the European Court of Justice and other
European and national institutions (see for instance Page 1997; Mangenot
1998; Georgakakis and de Lassalle 2007; Madsen 2011). These studies
provide us with important insights into the development of transnational
organizations like the European Union. They reveal the existence of a
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N. Kauppi
latent infrastructure that has to do with the institutionalized resources
available to some individuals and groups. The effects of this infrastructure
and especially its links with policy outputs need to be urgently studied.
Conclusions
While integration as a concept is absent in Bourdieu’s work, as an idea it
plays a prominent role in his reflection on societies and their power structures. I have tried to show that a sociological, or more precisely structural
constructivist, understanding of integration as a process of differentiation
and stratification can deepen analysis of international politics and
European integration through a scrutiny of the interface between individuals, groups and political institutions. In this chapter, the European
Parliament has provided an example of the ways in which institutionalization structures practices and resources. The key here is to realize that
human agency plays an important role in any institutional dynamics (for
the classic statement, see Berger and Luckmann 1966). In order to produce more precise pictures of reality, it is crucial not to present political
institutions as being free of human agency as some realist and neorealist
scholars do or to detach individuals from institutions, transforming them
into carriers of a universal, context-free rationality. Epistemological
choices, such as rational choice and social constructivism, have far-­
reaching effects on our, and the public’s, understanding of politics.
The reification and anthropomorphization of political institutions is a
major challenge for research on European integration. Through them
European institutions and the public policies produced are presented as
natural, inevitable and coherent. Alternatives are necessarily illusionary.
In reality, however, individuals are social beings, and alternatives exist.
Individuals and institutions are deeply interpenetrated. Clear-cut distinctions, such as the dichotomy between logics of consequentiality and of
appropriateness, are false. I have tried to show that basic sociological concepts such as differentiation and stratification can help us understand the
internal developments of international institutions like the European
Union, the constitution of roles and internal resources for instance. These
are useful when we try to make sense of developments in other parts of
Analyzing Integration
65
the world also (MERCOSUR, for instance). However, the standard sociological approach has its limits and has to be developed in two ways. The
first aspect is the historical analysis of various temporalities and their
interactions. In contrast to Eastonian systems (see Hix and Høyland
2011), institutions and the fields of action in which they evolve are
dynamic entities that function in various, more or less structured and
stable contexts. The second point is analysis of the plurality of often contradictory transformations. Historical processes are never monocausal
and easily predictable. A major challenge for research will be to find ways
to collect historically informed data on the development of the politicians, administrators, institutions and policies involved in European
regional integration.
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4
Constructing Transnational Fields
This chapter develops a political sociology approach to study the evolving
relationship between the redistribution of social resources and the structuration of institutional spaces beyond the nation-state. I will first discuss
general features of transnational fields and then move to an examination of
the European Parliament as an empirical case that illustrates this approach.
The approach developed here is not a theory in the strict sense of the
term but rather an instrument in a process of scientific rationalization
that attempts to make sense out of reality. In this perspective, the object
of this approach, transnational social fields, form the social infrastructure
of globalization processes. They are historical constructions, subjected to
a double historicity: the development of the position of the scholar or
observer and the development of the objects that she tries to elucidate in
relation to other objects. Transnational fields enable highlighting through
controlled contextualization certain structural aspects that are crucial to
sociologically understand the structuration of resources and spaces that
cross the borders of nation-states. These structural aspects are both material and symbolic, that is they combine social interactional elements with
symbolic aspects or empirical dimensions with an intellectualist or i­ dealist
dimension. The scholar constructs the structures on the basis of empirical
© The Author(s) 2018
N. Kauppi, Toward a Reflexive Political Sociology of the European Union,
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71002-0_4
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observations, but the structures themselves are not directly visible.
Metaphorically speaking, these form the lines that the scholar draws to
connect the perceived points. This is the main difference between (French)
structuralist and more traditional empirical definitions of structures.
A social phenomenon never develops disconnected from other social
phenomena. For this reason, analysis of the contexts of their existence is
necessary. Research cannot isolate itself to either a macro or micro level
but has to combine these levels to a meso-level study (see Sartori 1970,
1053 for a similar point). Globalization’s structural aspects do not exist
‘out there’ as such but are products of the construction of reality by the
researcher, of the interaction between the researcher, her tools of analysis
and the objects under study. But this interaction does not take place disconnected from the rest of the world. The autonomy of the research cannot be absolute. In a broad sense of the term, the activity of the scholar is
political both in terms of the links it has with other social activities (the
political, the economic) and in relation to the more specific sectors of
activity as an academic (for instance disciplinary relationships). The value
of these sociological constructions is dependent on the results they produce and thus on their use in academia and beyond.
Transnationalism
Technological developments in communications and transformations in
the world economy have made transnational interactions a banal feature
of modern life in many areas of social activity. Recent work on the transnational has grown out of the need to make sense of key aspects of politics. These include the growing interactions between citizens and
politicians in different national settings and mobility across borders, the
structuration of various transnational spaces, the constitution of institutions and their impact on the denationalization of national political decision making and the reinforcement of global governance (see for instance,
Levitt and Schiller 2004). However, despite these dramatic changes in the
real world scholarly ontologies relative to politics have not kept up with
these developments. In mainstream political science, concepts such as
sovereignty and state autonomy are still central to any research on ­modern
Constructing Transnational Fields
71
politics. In mainstream IR, national entities are still framed as relatively
independent from one another and constituting the building blocks of
the international. Political science and IR are still very much separate
disciplines that are in competition with one another. Scholars are either
political scientists focusing on the nation-state or IR scholars exploring
interstate relationships. Given this disciplinary inertia, alternative ontologies, often from disciplines such as economics and sociology, are seen as
illegitimate curiosities that merely supplement established scholarly classifications. Drawing a new political map that would replace old maps is a
scholarly and politically uphill battle.
The purpose of this chapter is to break from this mold. Understanding
the dramatic developments at the nation-state level and between nation-­
states requires a double operation of recontextualization from the national
level to the transnational level and from an institutional or sectorial
(‘functional’) level to a social level. This recontextualization requires
localized and historically sensitive but theoretically informed empirical
work. The national and the supranational will be fused in a transnational
research perspective.
Transnationalism has emerged as a major alternative to traditional
approaches stuck in the dialectics between the national and the international. Transnational history has already developed both in Europe and
North America (Iriye and Saunier 2009). Scholars working in the area of
migration studies have adopted this perspective (Wimmer and Glick
Schiller 2002), as have some French sociologists of law (for recent work see
Dezalay and Garth 2013; Madsen 2011b) and German scholars of
European integration (Mau 2010; Büttner and Mau 2014). At the moment,
there is exciting work on the transnational formation of IR theory (Guilhot
2010), on transnational professionals (Bigo 2013; Kauppi and Madsen
2013; Sending 2009), and in sociology some French language reflections
on the international circulation of ideas (see Bourdieu 1989).
A transnational approach seeks to overcome the divide between the
‘inside’, the nation-state, and the ‘outside’, the global, by focusing on the
interplay between several national contexts. It focuses on aspects neglected
by the canonized form of IR. The neglected objects of IR include interest
representatives, social groups, nongovernmental organizations, and ‘regular’ individuals. But the national is not the opposite of the international
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N. Kauppi
any more than it is the opposite of the transnational. In other words,
studying the transnational level does not mean dispensing with the
national level. Rather, national levels are to varying degrees, which are to
be determined empirically, transnationalized and thus take part in transnational transactions. In a way, from the scholar’s point of view, transnational approach requires doing a double amount of work, at both national
and supranational levels, compared to approaches that stay at one level.
But there are clear differences in terms of how the concept of transnational is understood and how it is empirically mobilized.
Field Analysis
In order to sociologically get a grip of transnational developments, the
transnational dimension has to be supplemented with another scholarly
approach, that of fields. Already operationalized by social psychologist
Kurt Lewin, today it is mostly known as having been developed by Pierre
Bourdieu and his students (for a presentation, see Swartz 2013). In its
most generic, essentially Weberian formulation, fields are relatively autonomous structured spaces where a variety of agents struggle for power.
Fields can be political fields, involving those who do politics as a profession, institutions like political parties and parliaments, practices such as
elections and so on. An institution such as parliament can also be analyzed as a field, involving conventions, the structuration of positions and
resources, strategies to maintain the status quo or subvert dominant values, the stratification of social resources and so on. They are historically
formed. But in contrast to other field approaches (for instance Fligstein
and McAdams 2012), the one developed in this tradition of structural
constructivism (see Ansart 1990; Bourdieu 1989; Kauppi 2005; Kull
2014) focuses on the social infrastructure of modern life. Social fields cannot be reduced to organizational structures (DiMaggio and Powell 1991)
as they often encompass several institutional and organizational spaces.
Like Weber or Marx, Bourdieu provides critical intellectual tools for a
holistic analysis of power in the modern world. While Bourdieu’s own studies have concentrated on France (or earlier on Algeria), since the ­second part
of the 1990s scholars inspired by Bourdieu’s work have applied and extended
some of his ideas in the sociology of IR and especially of European regional
Constructing Transnational Fields
73
integration (see for instance Georgakakis 2012). Pioneering Bourdieuinspired sociological studies have concentrated on supranational institutionalization in a variety of transnational fields that cannot be reduced to
international spaces, paving the way for a theoretical reflection of the structuration of positions and resources beyond the nation-state. The concept of
field has been particularly useful in mapping transformations in power
resources as it provides a nonnormative basis for analysis of the social conditions of political action in radically transformed circumstances. However, at
the same time, the uses of the term have been varied, thanks in part to the
flexibility of the concept itself. Empirically, this extension of Bourdieu’s
approach has led to a reexamination of some tenets of Bourdieusian sociology: its reliance on static and closed structures, its focus on the nation-state
framework, its lack of comparative perspective (see Daloz 2013 for a discussion of some of these points). Scholars (see for instance, Kauppi and
Madsen 2013) have introduced more dynamic elements: the changing
power relationships between political institutions in transnational social
fields, the increasing role of a variety of informal, transnational professional groups in policy-making, the embeddedness of regional integration
in global economic and technological interconnections, and the deeper historical underpinnings of intra-European power relations between countries
(colonial/noncolonial) and social classes.
In contrast to other field approaches, such as organizational fields
approach, developed by American sociologists (DiMaggio and Powell
1991) or strategic action fields elaborated by European and American
sociologists and political scientists (Schimmelfennig 2003; Fligstein and
McAdam 2012), transnational fields in the structural constructivist sense
are social fields, that is they are fundamentally based on interdependencies
and power relationships that are not sectorial or institutional but social.
Furthermore, they are transnational; that is, they are not confined to a
relatively homogeneous national entity, and they encompass several more
established national and institutional contexts. Generally, they are less
structured than fields at national or lower scalar levels. But they are not
necessary weak fields (Mudge and Vauchez 2012) as opposed to strong
fields. This formulation would bring us back to an epistemologically and
politically problematic static and closed ‘once and for all’ structural framework. A more dynamic and nuanced approach is required that takes as its
object the historically and locally variable strength of fields or of field
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N. Kauppi
effects and their process of structuration. This is because of historical and
scholarly reasons: they are often historically more recent, less established
and therefore have been less studied and less objectified by scholarly and
lay discourses. Certain sectors of a field can be more structured than others at a specific point in time. For instance, the dominant pole might be
the object of more social control than the dominated pole. Social fields do
not necessarily develop in a linear fashion from less structured to more
structured either. A case in point is the Eurozone as a social field.
These ontological reorientations in terms of the transnational and the
social need to be supplemented with an additional methodological principle, reflexivity. In contrast to other field approaches developed by North
American scholars, the analysis of transnational social fields from a structural constructivist perspective requires mobilizing a sociology that does
not confound the scholar’s model of reality with reality itself. This means
that transnational social fields are constructions, that is scholarly rationalizations that aim at making intelligible a question or problem that the
scholar seeks to elucidate. These constructions should not be confused
with ‘reality’. Furthermore, constructions can never capture the whole of
reality, which is always overdetermined.
The rapport between the scholar (or the observer) and observed reality
is not static but interactive. The choices the scholar makes can in part be
understood in relation not only to broader social and cultural contexts
such as the current processes of globalization but also to his/her professional habits, formation, position in academia and so on. These are obviously evolving, just like the objects of study are. Interactivity between
these levels means also varying mutual influence. The knowledge produced by the scholar is not just a more or less accurate reflection of a
preexisting reality but also a statement that to varying degrees takes part
in processes of social construction of reality. The performative effects of
scholarly activity on ‘reality’ link it with developments outside the academic world, especially the political world. In other words, academic and
nonacademic action feed into one another, creating various forms of
material and symbolic dependency and even symbiosis. EU—studies is a
perfect contemporary example of this symbiosis between academia and
politics (White 2003, see Chap. 10). In other words, the transnational
social fields that scholars are interested in are embedded in multiple institutional contexts. Actors involved in transnational transactions in various
Constructing Transnational Fields
75
social worlds, including the academic world, contribute to the production
of the object of their study, transnational fields. These transnational social
fields are academic and nonacademic coproductions.
he European Parliament as a Transnational
T
Field
The European context has provided a ‘natural’ terrain for studies of transnational social fields. After two disastrous wars that started in Europe but
became global, European elites engaged in a process of incremental integration that started in strategic areas like coal and steel production.
Deepening European integration was seen as the solution to European
devastation. European unification has been one of the success stories of
the second part of the twentieth century. Integration meant setting up
new supranational spaces of interaction in key areas and the eventual
creation of centers of political and economic power such as the European
Commission and the European Central Bank, central institutions of
what was to become the European Union (EU). Fundamentally, macro-­
level regional integration depended on the historical formation of transnational social spaces or fields of varying force to foster interactions
between agents from the formerly belligerent nations. This interaction
ranged from the highest to the lowest level, from political and economic
decision makers to miners, cleaners, housewives and families.
Since the 1950s, social scientific research on European integration has
been dominated by legal, political science and economic approaches.
A symbiosis between politics and research by social scientists developed.
Seminal works, such as those by Ernst B. Haas, provided a rationalized
history of integration and evidence-based research results as well as theoretical concepts such as spillover that were appropriated by scholars and
politicians alike to plan their activities (Haas 1958). European integration has fundamentally been a political and scholarly coproduction.
The perspective that I would like to develop not only provides an alternative to basic textbooks on European regional integration and politics (see
for instance Hix and Høyland 2011) but also the tools to explore policy
structures and processes of integration; in other words, the stratification
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N. Kauppi
and differentiation of power in certain social configurations. Restricting
the analysis of power structures that go beyond the nation-­state to the
institutional level will prevent understanding the complexity of the transformations under way. Institutions such as the European Parliament evolve
in more or less stable contexts or environments that include other institutions such as the Council or the Commission in the traditional institutional triangle of the EU and also national institutions such as Parliaments
and governments, as well as more regional institutions and events that
structure political life, most notably elections. All these form a multileveled
political field, structured around two dimensions, the supranational/
national and the political/technocratic. The dynamic topography that the
multileveled political field forms has its own temporal rhythm, punctuated
and structured by elections and unforeseeable political and economic
events. It is simply not possible to understand the internal structuration of
the European Parliament (EP) without taking into account national elections and government formation. As part of individual and collective political strategies, these determine the investment individual actors and
political groups make to the European Parliament. These social configurations are not reducible to transnational institutional configurations. In
other words, the social networks in which individual actors such as MEPs
are embedded are not limited to the institutional setting of the European
Parliament. Social configurations vary a great deal depending on the previous political and social experience of MEPs (Member of the European
Parliament) and can include NGOs (nongovernmental organizations),
media, academic institutions and so on. These social configurations will
give us clues on the social resources available to these actors. These social
resources can be dependent on previous positions held in other fields, or to
the existence of certain types of ‘multipositionalities’, that is of holding
several political positions at the same time at regional, national and supranational levels. These varied resources will give us clues on the available
political strategies that MEPs develop. They can be investments at the
national level when the newly elected MEP uses his/her EP mandate to
prepare for national elections, for instance to the national parliament.
The example of the French Front National illustrates this use of the EP
and the social configurations involved. According to Votewatch, an NGO
(nongovernmental organization) following parliamentary work in the EP
funded partly by the Soros Foundation, the three Front National MEPs
Constructing Transnational Fields
77
have not participated at all in the regular commission work in the EP
since 2009. They have instead been present in the plenary sessions that
take place once a month in Strasbourg, France, in contrast to the regular
commission work in Brussels, Belgium where decisions are made.
According to the statistics of Votewatch, Marine Le Pen, the president of
the FN and MEP, has been quite inactive in her European parliamentary
work. The FN MEP displays a participation in plenary votes of 65.6 percent while the average is 83.3 percent for all French MEPs. This is a score
that allows Marine Le Pen to stay above the 50 percent threshold below
which MEPs lose half their daily attendance allowance. Among parliamentary activities, Marine Le Pen has written three parliamentary questions and has intervened 44 times in plenary sessions during her five years
in office. She has not produced a single resolution, report or written statement since 2009 (Barbière 2014). Marine Le Pen has used the position of
MEP as a transnational power base for continuing her activity at the
national and regional levels. This political strategy has been rewarded at
the municipal elections in 2014, making the FN as the most popular
party in France. Marine Le Pen is now aiming at the parliamentary elections in 2015. Another example of this type of use of the MEP mandate
is Jean-Luc Mélenchon, charismatic leader of the extreme leftist Front de
gauche, a record absentee as are both Jean-Marie Le Pen (father) and
Marine Le Pen (daughter). During the parliamentary year 2013–14,
Mélenchon had not taken part in any meetings of the EU’s foreign affairs
committee that meets in Brussels, of which he is a vice president (Laurent
and Léchenet 2014). His most visible mode of participation in parliamentary work was sending e-mails as written intervention after plenary discussions in Strasbourg. These national politicians clearly use the EP as an
external resource that is converted into domestic visibility and ­influence.
Parliamentary work in the EP is nonexistent. But these are clearly a very
small minority as most, even Euroskeptic MEPs, take part in parliamentary work and develop their European political agendas. Le Pen and
Mélenchon seem to have none.
The significance of internal resources in the institutionalization of the
EP cannot be overemphasized. For instance, in the recent election of vice
presidents for the EP, Brice Hortefeux, a former French conservative minister and protégé of former President Nicolas Sarkozy, was not elected to
the post. According to one MEP, ‘Everyone knows that he is not the most
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N. Kauppi
assiduous and the hardest working. In (the European, nk) Parliament, it
is not his former position as a (national, nk) minister that will protect
him. He is not particularly popular in (the European, nk) Parliament. He
is not particularly invested. His fellow members know that’ (Le Monde
2014, my translation). Numerous other MEPs, such as Joseph Daul from
the conservative UMP, have invested heavily in work in the EP. Daul has
used his considerable political experience in agriculture to climb the
political ladder in the EP, converting external resources into internal ones.
Analyzing the EP as a transnational social field requires then analyzing
social resources that are internal and external to the institution. This will
enable the scholar to see how actors succeed or fail to convert different
types of resources (internal/external, economic, political etc.). This
requires that inside the institution itself the roles of different political
groups and the European Parliament committees, for example, or the
European Parliament’s rapporteurs, be analyzed in a multidimensional
context. It also requires exploring the development of political positions
and discourses, as well as political debate in relation to the positions of
MEPs and their evolution. Differentiation and stratification lead to the
historical formation of dominant discourses and policy positions inside
the institution. These social processes take place in complex evolving
transnational social fields that encompass several institutions and spheres
of social action at both transnational and national levels.
According to the official rhetoric of the EU, the European Parliament
is a unique political experiment in the history of the world and one of the
brightest achievements of European integration. Its members are elected
by direct election from the European Union member-states. It is, of
course, a paradox that while the European Parliament has gained political
power, especially through the Treaty of Lisbon, it is still relatively weak
compared to the European Commission and the Council (see Goetze and
Rittberger 2010). Not well known among the voters, it is often undervalued by leading politicians.
Over the years, the European Parliament has come to represent to some
politicians a credible alternative political career to the traditional national
or regional political careers. For example, in France, female politicians
have used the European Parliament elections to integrate into the national
political system (Kauppi 2005). Less publicly recognized and socially regulated than domestic institutions, the European Parliament has offered
Constructing Transnational Fields
79
leading socialist politicians like French President François Mitterrand a
way to reward ambitious, young female politicians while avoiding a rebellion against party leadership by male politicians. To provide places for
female politicians in the European Parliament and not in the lower chamber of parliament or the National Assembly was for Mitterrand a way to
satisfy both groups. But as the saying goes, what is thrown out of the
window comes back in through the main door. It is no coincidence that
Jacques Delors’s daughter, Martine Aubry, led the Socialist Party in 2008,
and that several prominent Socialist politicians with experience in the
European Parliament today, such as Elisabeth Guigou, are women.
Regional and local politicians have also benefited from the development of
the European Parliament. The European Parliament provides them a way
to bypass the national political center and its power structures and to use
the EU’s economic and political tools, such as the Structural Funds, to
further their careers. This is the case in France, but even more so in federal
states such as Germany. Some of the local and regional politicians’ career
strategies have been convergent with the European Union’s attempts to
create, in the name of the principle of subsidiarity (decision making should
always be as close as possible to the citizens), efficient ‘Euroregions’ (uniting regions from different member-­states) that support Brussels’ tug of war
with the member-states. The third group, which has benefited from
European integration is composed of politicians from extremist parties.
French Front National founder Jean-­Marie Le Pen has been sitting in the
European Parliament since 1984, using this as a supranational base for his
national political game. Without the EP, the extreme right in France would
have been unlikely to become the most popular party in October 2013.
Though EP elections are still regarded by the political establishment as
second-class elections (Reif and Schmitt 1980), they have a significant
impact on the long-term development of national and European politics.
It would be more accurate to say that the EP elections may be second
class for first-class parties (large parties that participate in government),
but they are certainly first-class elections for second-class parties. Without
this largely neglected use of the EP, that is, how the EP has saved and even
favored European extremist political parties, it is impossible to understand the policies of the EU and its member-states today when far-right
parties are becoming more popular in France, Belgium, the Netherlands,
Hungary and other European countries. One could even argue that the
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N. Kauppi
normative classification of EP elections as second-class elections and as
such not worthy of the same political and scholarly attention as first-class
elections (elections to the lower chamber and presidential elections essentially) has prevented scholars, politicians and the public from detecting
crucial political dynamics in European societies and the role of the EP in
these. The scholarly and lay ontology according to which Europe is ‘out
there’ and politics ‘in here’ has also contributed to this blindness. In reality, the two spheres are intertwined in complex ways that require a transnational approach to disentangle.
The effects of European integration occur as transfers, or better, translations of institutions and practices into domestic political and administrative fields. It is a complex process that has been documented in numerous
studies (see for instance Radaelli 2003). But it also involves less studied
and publicized movements in the other direction and the constitution of
hybrid transnational social fields. Symbolic and discursive effects, that is
how formal changes are interpreted and used, vary depending on power
relations and opportunity structures. The political value of the European
Parliament varies from country to country and from party to party. In
general, politicians from smaller member-states, such as Finland, appreciate more the EP than do politicians from larger member-­states such as
Britain or France. This means that in some member-states, the European
Parliament’s political value is quite high, and working there is considered
as being a good investment for an ambitious politician. Traditionally,
French politicians have been skeptical of the European Parliament (see
Shemer-Kunz 2013). This attitude resonates with the official French intergovernmentalist position in European politics, that is the position according to which European integration should be an issue decided by European
governments instead of civil society, citizens or parliamentarians.
The proportional representation of European elections in all EU
member-­states favors smaller parties. Thus, political movements such as
the far-right Front National have been well represented in the European
Parliament. It is no exaggeration to say that without the European
Parliament, it probably would not even exist today as a political force. The
European Parliament has provided the Front National, and for left-­wing
movements, such as the Trotskyist Lutte Communiste révolutionnaire (LCR)
and the Front de gauche led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a transnational base
from which they have been able to continue their political activity.
Constructing Transnational Fields
81
This example shows that European integration is not free of contradictions, as all of these extremist parties are fiercely anti-European but do not
mind being represented in the European Parliament.
The key question is how individual politicians and political groups take
advantage of European integration, of its institutions and policies and the
opportunities that are presented to them. ‘Use’ is defined very broadly,
mostly instrumentally. It is understood as practices related to the development of careers and groups of politicians specialized in European politics.
The connection between political institutions and individuals is crucial as
it brings together individuals with the constitution of policies. The aim is
to analyze the positive or negative correlations between these different levels, the resources that are legitimized/delegitimized, new power structures
and, ideally, to find causal connections between individuals, groups and
policies. The latter part of the study is, of course, the most challenging.
If we start from individuals, the key is what kind of features are statistically typical of certain political groups that operate in European
­institutions or their vicinity. Age groups in the European Parliament can
be separated from each other in terms of how long they have been members of the House (see for instance, Scarrow 1999). French MEPs typically invest weakly in the Parliament. With regard to the second level, the
research can explore which groups are using power in certain institutions
or, in certain parts of the institution. For the European Parliament this
would require studying, for example, the changing role of political groups
such as the conservative EPP (European Peoples’ Party), which is with the
S&D (European Socialists and Social-Democrats), the largest party in the
EP. Scholars have studied the formation of the cabinets in the European
Commission (Egeberg 2010) and the characteristics and resources of
European Parliament’s committee chairmen (Beauvallet and Michon
2010). The third level of analysis aims to integrate social background and
policy outputs. Research in this area is still nearly nonexistent.
Researchers have studied these issues using primarily three complementary research methods. The first is quantitative and concerns the social
groups such as the European Parliament’s or the European Commission’s
members (Ross 1995; Page 1997). This approach can lead to so-called
prosopographic studies of collective life in the European Parliament.
Another study technique is interviews. The purpose of the interviews is to
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fine-tune the quantitative data by adding a subjective dimension to the
research. The third approach is discursive and aims to analyze the official
documents and policy statements. Ideally, the research process is characterized by the constant movement between quantitative and qualitative, statistical and numerical methods more widely and individuals to positions,
discourses and institutional structures. The fourth dimension is historic.
This is difficult to take into account because the systematic gathering of
information can be virtually impossible, or because the information is not
available or its collection would take too much time. Most of the research
is therefore not diachronic but synchronic. This is of course a major drawback because the EU’s institutional development and the understanding of
its dynamic topography is crucial to the analysis of political institutions,
power structures and practical dimensions.
French political sociologists Beauvallet and Michon’s research focuses
on the professionalization of the European Parliament (Beauvallet and
Michon 2010). More institutional studies are those of Costa, Navarro and
Scarrow (Costa 2001; Navarro 2009; Scarrow 1999). Beauvallet and
Michon argue that the European Parliament has become more independent in relation to other political institutions in the sense that the careers
in the European Parliament have become more dependent on the European
Parliament’s internal political resources (a similar examination can be
found in Kauppi 2005, 2010). By this they mean resources such as seniority (experience), social capital, knowledge and language skills. Seniority
refers to the fact that the candidates close to the top of the European
Parliament Bureau, committee or political group or the presidency are not
beginners but have significant experience in working in the institution.
They have internalized the institution’s culture and developed a political
role as the institution’s representatives (‘institutional charisma’). Social
capital refers to connections and networks. One must know the right people and be known by others, an in-group member. Expertise is recognized
competence in a specific area that is relevant to the functioning of the
European Parliament. Political work in the European Parliament is very
technical and may be related to the environment or human rights, for
example. One must be able to operate in English, French and some other
European languages. In practice, English and, to a lesser extent, French are
the working languages of the European Union institutions. Of course,
Constructing Transnational Fields
83
knowledge of less commonly used languages, such as Finnish, can be of
considerable advantage in certain circumstances. For Beauvallet and
Michon, these resources are necessary for leadership positions in the
European Parliament. In this sense, since the first direct elections in 1979,
the history of the European Parliament can be seen as being a history of the
stratification of social resources: the value of the abovementioned internal
resources having risen relatively more than so-called external resources that
are linked to social configurations external to the institution.
Beauvallet and Michon explore the value of external resources such as
national political experience. To simplify, if in the 1980s, external
resources such as experience in national government were the condition
for political success in the European Parliament, 20 years later they had
lost their value. In the 1980s, many highly positioned MEPs had earlier
national parliamentary experience and had been ministers in government. They were elite members of the national political systems of the
member-states. In the French case, this meant integration in political
institutions in the capital, Paris, the only place that had real meaning for
politicians. For French politicians, election to Parliament was not valued,
as its value was considered as being somewhere between that of a regional
councilor and national deputy. It was not a viable career move and was
therefore less valuable than election to the National Assembly. In other
words, since 1979, when members of the European Parliament have
been first elected by direct popular vote, the relative value of external
resources for political careers in the European Parliament has dropped
while the value of some internal resources has increased. For example, 45
percent of the first-term (1979–1984) MEPs had experience in the
national parliament or in government. Twenty years later, for the fifthterm (1999–2004) MEPs, the figure had dropped to 28 percent. This
differentiation process has been concomitant with the uneven growth of
the European Parliament’s political power in relation to other EU institutions, mainly the European Commission but also the Council of
Ministers. In particular, thanks to the Treaty of Lisbon (2009), the
European Parliament is poised to play a central role in the democratic
development of the European Union.
Although abstention in European elections is still relatively common,
many see the European Parliament as representing the ordinary citizens
84
N. Kauppi
while the Commission is a supranational bureaucracy and the Council a
collection of Ministers. This symbolic dimension is important as the
European Parliament may present itself as the representative of ordinary
Europeans. Other transformations indicated by Beauvallet and Michon
include significant changes in parliamentary work. As MEPs remain in
office for longer than before, institutions and routines are stabilized. The
European Parliament has also become more international as a growing
number of MEPs have studied abroad and are fluent in several languages,
and includes more women MEPs than ever before.
Several researchers have made similar structural studies of the European
Commission and the European Court of Justice. Page’s work is a fundamental sociological study of the European Commission officials and their
social characteristics in different parts of the administration (Page 1997).
Madsen’s work focuses on the Court of Justice lawyers, their backgrounds
and the networks that control the supranational legal game (Madsen
2011a). Mangenot has made a study of the French elite school ENA
(Ecole nationale d’administration), its transfer from Paris to Strasbourg
and how this move has exacerbated tensions between the national and the
international in the French political class (Mangenot 1998). These studies provide us with important information on how political careers
­integrate and change the political structures and institutions of the
European Union and the European nation-states. They show that a separate European political class does not exist for the simple reason that
political careers combine many institutional spheres vertically at the
national and supranational level (the local/regional council, the National
Parliament, the Senate, the government, political party organization, the
European Parliament, the European Commission and so on), as well as
horizontally or sectorally (academia, government, finances and so on).
Heterogeneity is still so high that a strong sense of exclusive common
interests has not been able to develop, although some groups, such as the
European Commission officials, defend the EU’s achievements out of
official duty. In this sense, they form the vanguard. But the defense of
those interests does not necessarily mean that these officials would all
have the same ‘European identity’, that they would have swapped their
national identities for a European identity.
Constructing Transnational Fields
85
Conclusion
Transnational social fields are not reducible to institutional or organizational structures. In contrast to institutional approaches, they enable a
more holistic analysis of institutions. In the case of the European Parliament,
this means an analysis of the social configurations in which individuals are
embedded and the social resources they have access to. I have tried to show
that the process of European regional integration as social field formation
and collective action involving stratification (some social resources and values gain more power than others) and differentiation (institutional differentiation is a form of social differentiation) d
­ eepens our understanding of
its social dynamics. The European Parliament is an example of how social
field structuration shapes practices and resources, as well as the interactions
between individuals, groups and political institutions. A political sociology
perspective also reveals the hidden deep structure that is tied to social
resources, which (re)produce inequality between groups and individuals.
Social resources are unevenly distributed. The effects of this deep structure
on policy outcomes should be promptly investigated.
The importance of internal resources in EU institutions such as the EP
may also prevent the formation of a homogeneous European political class
as each subgroup seeks to protect its resources and prevent the development of common resources, thereby sharpening institutional differences
between the EP, the Council and the Commission. Research is also needed
to explore how transnational groups manage to increase their power, to
create common interests and a subjective sense of membership and how
this process is linked to transformations in global governance, in particular
private power users such as lawyers and law offices, security experts and
actors in the financial world. From this point of view, the EU is a player in
a wider political and economic game whose rules are set in part elsewhere.
An approach in terms of transnational fields sustained by sociological
concepts such as differentiation and stratification may help us understand the development of power resources in supranational institutions
such as the European Union and the formation of power structures
beyond the nation-state. These concepts are useful when trying to make
sense of the political and economic developments that go beyond the
nation-state and in a longer historical perspective.
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N. Kauppi
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5
Political Legitimation and European
Public Spaces: Communication
as Practice and Resource
Until recently, public mediation between political institutions and
European citizens has taken place in national public spaces and was a
monopoly of national political institutions and parties, associations and
the media. Since the 1980s, this mediation has come under strain.
Supranational segmented, strong networks and publics have developed
around European decision making and its executive networks. The chasm
between these supranational segmented publics and general national
publics has deepened, worsening the notorious ‘democratic deficit’.
Political communication in the segmented networks has been technocratic, specialized and ‘nonpolitical’ (in the traditional sense of the term),
reinforcing the legitimacy of the social resources linked with this type of
political communication. In contrast, national public spaces are dominated by accessible, political language based on traditional, national repertoire. The mediation between these two registers has become increasingly
problematic, and there has been growing public demands, finally manifesting in the growth of nationalistic populist parties, that the asymmetrical relationship between supranational and national communication
structures be adjusted. The European Commission’s new communication
strategy of 2004–05 was an attempt to correct this problem. In this
© The Author(s) 2018
N. Kauppi, Toward a Reflexive Political Sociology of the European Union,
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71002-0_5
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c­ hapter, I will briefly discuss the general structures of European public
spaces and follow with an analysis of the transformations in the
Commission’s communication strategy since September 2004.
The European Commission took the initiative and, for the first time,
openly challenged the monopoly of political legitimacy of national political institutions and media. Since the fall of 2004, the European
Commission has been involved in the construction of a new communication strategy that would fill the gap between supranational segmented
publics and general national publics. In the same movement, the
Commission was attempting to forge for itself a new political role as the
privileged mediator between European citizens and European decision
makers. This risky political move involved the redefinition of the status of
political communication, the reinforcement of the communication aspect
in all of the Commission’s activities, the recruitment of new personnel
with communication competence and the increase in communication-­
related expenditures. The purpose of these actions was to boost the
Commission’s symbolic legitimacy to transform it from a technocratic to
a real political institution. In this sense, the new communication strategy
also reproduced an updated version of a political Europe, in contrast to
the idea of Europe as a free trade area.
The new communication strategy of the European Commission started
being built in September 2004. Announced later in the autumn of 2004,
the publication of a white paper was postponed to June 2005. In June
2005, Margot Wallström, vice president of the Commission and
Commissioner in charge of institutional relations and communication
strategy, informed the press that a white paper would be published in the
autumn of 2005, nearly a year after the Commission led by Jose Barroso
had taken office. How should we interpret this postponement? Was it yet
another sign of the Commission’s failure simultaneously to reform institutionally and to set up a new communication strategy?1 Or, as a postponement and not a cancelation, did it signify that reform was well under
way and might eventually lead to success? In this chapter, I will examine
this process as part of a broader transformation in the public mediation
between European Union institutions and European citizens. It was the
dynamic interaction between the Commission, the Council and the
Parliament that enabled the Commission to elaborate on a c­ ommunication
Political Legitimation and European Public Spaces…
91
strategy. I will interpret the new communication strategy as the result of
struggles between (and in) European Union institutions (notably the
Commission, the Parliament and the Council) and the member-­states to
control the symbolic and material resources embedded in evolving forms
of public mediation. These symbolic and material resources include political legitimacy, administrative posts and financial means. The EU institutions in question had very different conceptions of their role and
responsibilities. The Commission’s strategy was to try to convince the
member-states to carry a heavier burden in the democratization of the
European Union. For its part, the European Parliament saw itself as the
defender of ordinary European citizens while the European governments
embodied political legitimacy.
The setting up of the communication strategy came at a time when
several external and internal pressures were at work. Eastern enlargement
had increased the number of member-states to 25, and the process of ratification of the constitutional treaty had been seriously damaged by the
referenda in France and the Netherlands. In the Commission itself, pressures to reform its administrative practices had been building up since the
1990s and the resignation of the Santer Commission. All of these developments created a situation of urgency/emergency.
Structures of European Public Spaces
A preliminary analysis of the European public space requires a critique of
existing theories of European public spaces. According to the author of
the most famous of these theories, Jürgen Habermas, Europe needs an
effective public sphere which would fill the gap between European decision making and national publics (see Habermas 2001; for a discussion,
see Statham and Trenz 2012). This is one of the conditions of existence of
a European democracy. Paradoxically, creating a common European public sphere would require the depoliticization of the role of national languages and cultures and the politicization of a common European
language and culture. A multicultural, multilinguistic and multireligious
European, transnational public sphere should be decoupled from the
majority cultures in the member-states. This multicultural civil society
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would have to accept groups coming from very different cultural and
linguistic milieus. In Habermas’s vision, a constitutional patriotism based
on the values of liberal democracy could be the remedy to the problems
of European democracy. Citizens should transfer their feelings of loyalty
from the nation-state and the common origin based on a common culture to an abstract foundation, a European constitution.
The Habermasian model of a European public sphere should be examined more in detail as a preliminary for the elaboration of a more sophisticated model. The first problem with Habermas’s theory is the effect of
homogeneity it produces. Habermas assumes that the national public
space is relatively homogeneous, and, for that reason, the European public space should also be so. However, it seems questionable to transpose
the model of the homogeneous national public space from the national
to the supranational level for the simple reason that the homogeneity is
simply taken for granted and not empirically validated. In reality, national
public spaces are not necessarily homogeneous. For instance, in Finland,
public debates take place in two main languages, Finnish and Swedish,
and to a lesser extent in the third official language Sami, each language
endowed with its own traditional and electronic media. Examples could
be extended. This effect of homogeneity is complemented by another
effect, that of impermeability. Habermas seems to assume that national
public spaces are not only homogeneous but also separated from one
another. In reality, the relationships between national public spaces are
multiple and complex. For instance, economic and political elites in all
European member-states follow, to variable degrees, English-language
media such as the Financial Times and the Economist, as well as the
Internet. Some national elites even follow discussions and debates in languages such as French and German. Furthermore, in different national
public spaces, debates center to some extent on the same issues and
events, put in form by international news agencies such as Reuters and
the Associated Press. The concept of the national public space as relatively
homogeneous and limited by clear geographical borders is a myth, a
myth produced in relation to political theories centering on the
nation-state.
In order to advance, theoretical reflection has to be complemented
with empirical studies on the structural features of European public
Political Legitimation and European Public Spaces…
93
spaces. The analysis of these aspects might require empirical scrutiny of
the penetration of specific symbolic goods (for instance, administrative
instruments and criteria) circulating in global linguistic spheres (for
instance, English- and French-language global linguistic spheres) into
more restricted national public spaces (such as ‘Finland’) and supranational segmented public spaces such as the ones forming around European
public policies. The detailed analysis of a case like Finland as a national
public space can give us clues concerning the mechanisms that favor the
success of symbolic products originating from the English-language linguistic sphere, for instance. It might be useful to separate from one
another the institutional support of national public spaces (school systems, media…), the linguistic spheres of influence in which the national
space in question is inserted and the relative position in terms of size and
symbolic power of the public space in question in the global structure of
linguistic spheres of influence. The structuration of a European public
space can be analyzed in terms of linguistic spheres of influence (language
being a hypercollective good) (Swaan 2001) in terms of diversity of publics (general publics and segmented publics, national publics and supranational publics) as well as in terms of modalities of symbolic action
(political and/or political) and their political effects.
In contrast to Abram de Swaan’s well-known analysis, the emphasis
will, however, be on political power as the key element in the restructuration of European public spaces. Particular attention will be given to the
penetration of English-language media in national public spaces like in
Finland and France, which represent two contrastive cases of national
public spaces. Finland composes a relatively impermeable bilingual public space whereas France composes a monolingual public space inserted
in a global linguistic sphere of influence that includes other nation-states
such as Belgium, Switzerland and other countries outside the EU. The
Finnish case represents a culturally relatively conscripted space historically specialized in cultural importation whereas the French case represents a larger sphere, historically involved in cultural and political
exportation, the power of which is challenged today by the growing
influence of a (virtual and real) English-language sphere of influence and
the multitude of segmented, strong publics (Eriksen 2004) that develop
around it.
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These are not abstract issues, as the structures of public spaces are
linked to the uses political elites (and ordinary citizens) make of their
social resources. For instance, in the French and Finnish public spaces,
very different modes of symbolic action (political and/or intellectual) are
favored. If the French model is known, since the Dreyfus affair, for the
idea of the intellectual as a counter-force to state authorities, in Finland
the intellectual has been, since the national independence movement of
the nineteenth century, in the service of the state. Consequently, the repertoires of symbolic action vary a great deal. Two differences are crucial
for an analysis of European public spaces as spaces of symbolic action.
First, it is not unusual for critical Finnish intellectuals to become ministers. The symbiosis of politics and knowledge is materialized in the architecture of the main square of Helsinki, the capital of Finland. On one
side of the square stands the building of the government, on the other
side that of the University of Helsinki, and on the side between them the
main cathedral of the Lutheran church, the official state church. Second,
given the characteristics of the Finnish public space,2 intellectuals are,
from the beginning of their university education, inserted into several,
larger linguistic spheres of influence, at least the Swedish-language sphere
(and the Scandinavian one closely connected to the Swedish-language
sphere of influence) and, since the Second World War, the English-­
language sphere of influence. However, these insertions are more than
linguistic. They are also cognitive and social, providing intellectuals with
specific cognitive and social resources and influencing the choice of intellectual (and political) objects of interest. Dominated in the European
public space compared to agents controlling resources located in the centers of dominant linguistic spheres (Paris and London, for instance) or
inserted in supranational segmented networks linked with cultural exportation on the global scale, these agents are, precisely because of their marginality, sensible to the effects of power the restructuration of European
public spaces involves. This aspect of ‘internal colonization’ of the
European space is an integral part of its restructuration. However, linking
to one another modes of symbolic action and structures of European
public spaces requires an analysis not only of national public spaces but
also of supranational segmented publics, such as the one mobilized by
Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida.
Political Legitimation and European Public Spaces…
95
In their famous text published simultaneously on May 31, 2003 in
German and French in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Libération,
Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (who cosigned the text) argued
that the war in Iraq had demonstrated that Europe needed a common
foreign policy to counterbalance the USA’s hegemonic power (Derrida
and Habermas 2003) According to the authors, the demonstrations in
several European cities on February 15, 2003 were a sign of the existence
of a European public sphere, in Habermasian theory the sine qua non
condition for the existence of a real political community. However,
another condition was the existence of a common political identity based
on a certain cosmopolitan conception of democracy and something
Habermas calls a Verfassungspatriotismus or constitutional patriotism. The
European convention could provide a formal basis on which a new
European political project could be built.
Habermas and Derrida are searching for a Renaissance of Europe
through the creation of a common political identity. European norms
and ‘exploits’, such as Christianity and capitalism, the natural sciences
and techniques, Roman law and the Napoleonic Code, democracy and
human rights, can potentially serve as a basis for this shared identity. The
authors note that one problem with this project of political legitimation
is that these exploits are not only European. For instance, some political
systems, such as the one in the USA, are based on European ideals.
Nevertheless, the point of this new political project is to overcome state
interests and ethnocentrism, transforming by the same token international law and institutions as we know them today.
The article quickly found resonance in other European countries. The
responses were by well-known individuals who were personal acquaintances of Habermas: Fernando Savater in El Pais, Gianni Vattimo in La
Stampa, Umberto Eco in Repubblica, Adolf Muschg in Neue Zürcher
Zeitung and Richard Rorty in Süddeutsche Zeitung. The intervention activated a supranational network of intellectuals endowed with considerable
symbolic capital. The network covered only the largest European member-­
states: in other words, those considered as weighing the most. The largest
member-states seemed to form a center. Simultaneously, the periphery,
including member-states like Finland and Sweden, was constructed.
Another distinction was created in the European intellectual space.
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We are dealing here with a very high caliber of transnational network
composed of individuals with worldwide reputations. In this way, a link
is forged between European and global structures of symbolic power.
This network can be contrasted with other European intellectual networks like the one created by the Helsinki Forum, uniting intellectuals
known in their national contexts but who do not have the worldwide
renown of Derrida and Habermas.
The political effect of this intervention was conditioned by the political echo it found among European segmented publics and European
public opinion. By legitimizing a critical policy toward the USA and the
war in Iraq, this intervention backed the policies of national leaders like
Jacques Chirac and his ambitions to create a common European defense.
On the other hand, the criticism leveled by Habermas and Derrida contributed to the normalization of a rift between the general public in
Western Europe and Eastern Europe on the one hand and in Continental
Europe and Transatlantic Europe on the other hand. The example of this
transnational network raises the crucial issue of the relationships between
segmented and general publics which is at the core of the notorious democratic deficit. The Commission’s new communication strategy can be
seen as an attempt to bridge segmented networks and the general public
in the member-states.
ommunicating Europe: Toward a ‘Policy
C
of the European Public Space’?
It is not insignificant to note that the new communication strategy of the
Barroso Commission had been taken in charge by the former Swedish
Commissioner for the environment, Margot Wallström, now vice president of the Commission and occupant of a new portfolio as Commissioner
for Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy. Wallström’s
goal was to ‘reinforce participatory democracy at the European level’ and
‘improve the way we communicate “Europe” to citizens’ (Wallström
2005a, p. 10; see also 2004). This new policy contained several innovations. The first one consisted in the conversion of partial, and even
­contradictory, communication strategies inside the Commission into a
Political Legitimation and European Public Spaces…
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single, coherent policy of the European public space. The second innovation consisted in the translation, from the Nordic context, of certain
policy instruments to the European level. These included ideas of administrative transparency and openness. Several questions needed to be studied. How did this new communication strategy transform the dialogue
between the Commission and European citizens? What was this new
‘common European narrative’ going to look like? How would this narrative be inscribed into political and administrative practices inside the
Commission and in the member-states?
Beginning in September 2004, the communication strategy was coupled with an institutional reform, necessary for the setting of the new
communication strategy. Wallström postponed making public this new
strategy because of, in her own words, the ‘culture’ and the internal procedures in the Commission (2005a). The aim of this communication
strategy was to provide the Commission with a unified profile, by simultaneously reforming the institution and the way it communicated inside
and outside. It is important to note that the outcomes of this attempt
would affect the future distribution of power not only in the Commission
but more broadly in the EU as a complex and dynamic polity (for analysis, see Kauppi 2005).
Since the 1990s, the European institutions have been involved in
attempts to reform themselves through the introduction of new policy
instruments, such as good governance, transparency and openness. Public
policy is defined through quantitative and qualitative instruments such as
‘goods’ of various kinds (openness, proximity, trust, transparency, competitiveness …) and ranking lists (democracy indexes, gender equality
indexes, competitiveness indexes and so on) that transform these abstract
values into numerical information. Simultaneously, there has been a proliferation of quantitative instruments produced by private organizations
such as the World Economic Forum and Transparency International that
present policy-makers with simple and transferable numerical information that can be used to legitimize and further certain policy choices.
These indexes and ranking lists have a common feature: they are all
explicitly linked to economic performance and competitiveness.
These qualitative instruments have very different origins. The concept
of good governance is the invention of the economists in the World Bank.
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Originally conceived as a means to normatively guide the politics and
administration of the Third World countries that benefited from the
World Bank’s funding, it has been diffused to other areas of politics and
administration. Today, it refers to different ways of responsibilization,
such as accountability. In contrast to good governance, transparency and
openness take the point of view of the citizens. In Sweden (and Finland,
which was then part of the Swedish kingdom), the idea of public access
to official documents has been embodied in law since the eighteenth century (Lamber 2002, p. 2). Ironically, one of the objects of the Swedish
statute on freedom of information of 1707 was to facilitate censorship
and the control of printing. Publishers had to send all their publications
to government-approved libraries, making these publications accessible
to universities. In 1766, a Freedom of the Press Act was passed in the
Swedish diet, requiring that official documents should upon request
‘immediately be made available to anyone making a request’ at no cost. In
line with this idea, according to the former European Ombudsman Jacob
Söderman, the purpose of these new instruments is to enable European
citizens to get information from European officials (Söderman 2001).
It comes as no surprise that in the EU some politicians see these administrative innovations (crystallized in the catchword ‘new public management’) as constituting means of moralizing in politics and administration.
The nationality of the leading protagonists of transparency and openness,
Commissioners Anita Gradin (Sweden), Erkki Liikanen (Finland) and
Margot Wallström (Sweden) has reinforced the ‘Nordic’ origin of these
ideas. It is not an accident, either, that the first European Ombudsman
was Finnish. The danger is that this attempt to reform European institutions turns, from an attempt to forge common, shared European values,
into a ‘Nordic’ reform of the EU following ‘Nordic’ standards, preventing thus a convergence in normative beliefs and identities in the EU as a
polity and administration. The very different administrative cultures in
the Commission are a further hindrance to the convergence of normative
beliefs. For instance, Peter Mandelson, Commissioner in charge of trade,
has not totally endorsed the principle of openness and transparency, as
the following quote indicates:
I shall also continue to consult the European Parliament on the main orientations of trade policy…I will share as much information as possible
Political Legitimation and European Public Spaces…
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with you, including by sending to your Committee copies of policy documents that are being discussed in the Council’s 133 Committee, allowing
for limited access where the content is particularly sensitive, in line with
the normal security rules of our institutions. (European Parliament
Hearings, Answer to Questionnaire for Commissioner Designate Mr. Peter
Mandelson. PE 348.063., 2004)
The most important institutional reform to date is the creation of a
new vice-presidential portfolio in the Commission. Defined as covering
institutional relations and communication strategy, the post is occupied
by Margot Wallström. This portfolio centers, according to president
Barroso, on six crucial points (Barroso 2004):
1. As the vice president in charge of institutional relations and communication strategy, Margot Wallström will represent the Commission in
Barroso’s absence.
2. Her job will be to strengthen the Commission’s capacity to communicate both from Brussels and in the member-states during the coming
process of ratification of the Constitution. In this process, the key role
is played by the Commission’s representatives in the member-states.
3. She will be responsible for the relations of the Commission with other
European institutions, such as the European Parliament, the Council,
the Committee of the Regions, the European Economic and Social
Committee as well as the European Ombudsman.
4. She will have to strengthen the relations of the Commission to the
national parliaments, which ‘anticipates the more important role foreseen for national Parliaments within the Constitution’.
5. She will be responsible for the Directorate General for Press and
Communication (DG X).
6. She will chair a Commissioner’s Group on communications and
programming.
The definition of the European public space changed dramatically in
Margot Wallström’s public statements from the media in Brussels to
national media in the member-states. The failure of the Prodi Commission
in ‘selling’ the Bolkestein directive provided the main element of this
‘reality check’ (for a usage of this term in the analysis of institutional
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reform see, Olsen 2001). This transformed communication strategy
became especially clear in an interview on April 28, 2005, where
Wallström revealed that communication is more than information: ‘It is
a true political exercise’ (Mahony 2005). Earlier that month in an interview to EurActiv, she revealed that the DG Press and Communication
had been restructured and the leading group changed as part of a broader
overhaul of the working methods in the Commission.
Apart from the usual structural problems (see, Smith 2004b), several
significant contextual factors led to the attempt to, yet again, foster a communication strategy for the Commission. The first one was the pressure
created by the referenda on the European Constitution. The lack of public
legitimacy of the Commission seemed to have been acknowledged as well
as the fact that the Commission could not continue to present itself as just
a technocratic institution. In these circumstances, the lack of legitimacy
has turned from something with which to live into a political problem. In
her intervention at the European Parliament on May 12, Wallström mentioned that the latest Eurobarometer showed a clear correlation between
the level of information on the Constitutional Treaty and the support for
it. About 75 percent of those who knew the Constitutional Treaty well
declared being in favor of it while the support of those who had never
heard about it was only of 22 percent. The conclusion Wallström drew
from these figures was that the EU had to communicate its projects better.
Among the factors that made communicating Europe difficult, she mentioned the complexity of the EU, the fact that it evolved and the varying
perceptions of the EU in different national contexts.
The second contextual factor was the perceptions political leaders and
officials in the EU had of the actual state of European integration. A sense
of urgency/emergency ruled, a sense that integration was running out of
steam. This was clearly visible in the development of Wallström’s own
interventions and interviews in the press since the end of 2004. According
to this narrative of emergency, if the Constitution was not ratified,
European integration would fail and lead to a major political and economic crisis. Nonratification would prevent the Union from developing,
fueling nationalism and weakening European institutions (Habermas
2005). For this scenario to be politically credible, there could not be a
‘plan B’ in case all the member-states did not ratify the constitutional
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treaty. The Commission’s new communication strategy, or rather the
pieces that had been until now made public, was in part an answer to this
looming crisis. Information and communication were, perhaps for the
first time, taken seriously. The strategy, transformed at the end of June
2005 into a ‘Plan-D for Democracy’, consisted of four parts, all of which
aimed at reaching European citizens in the language they understood.
First, the target audience of the Commission had been redefined from
the one residing in Brussels to those in national, regional and local contexts. The message of the Commission had to be tailor-made to the different national contexts. European news was not international news but
rather domestic news. This regionalization of European news could be
achieved only if the local (traditional and electronic) media was mobilized. The adversarial relationship between the Commission/press in
Brussels and the national media (Baisnée 2004, p. 143) had to be transformed into one of cooperation and mutual benefit. Transforming
European news into national, regional and local news meant explaining
to the citizens how EU affairs affected their everyday lives. The Commission
and DG X were using the national debates on the constitutional treaty as
an opportunity to get to the feelings of people. Using focus group techniques, the Commission was engaged in analyzing the differences between
member-states and selecting the target groups. One of the main target
groups was young people. The Commission had to provide them with a
practical mission such as, for instance, environmental integration or the
creation of a European common voluntary core that could be used for
humanitarian aid or environmental cleaning (Wallström 2005a, p. 10).
Second, the European Union was conceptualized as being a political
project anchored within the national and regional political traditions and
party systems (Wallström 2005a, p. 10). Evidence indicated that European
citizens did not trust the Commission.3 The lesson was clear that the
Commission had to be transformed from an apolitical technocratic agent
into a political agent. Commissioners had to engage themselves and represent the whole Commission, not just their portfolios (Wallström
2005b). The citizens had to understand that the Commission was a political agent that made political choices that affected directly their lives. This
political concern was linked to plans to professionalize the communication of the Commission by recruiting competent people into the
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s­ pokespersons’ service, of better using the tools available (Eurobarometer,
surveys and so on), of critically evaluating the effectiveness of the communication strategy and so on. The Commission’s Plan D sought to
responsibilize the member-states and to fully involve them in the initiation of public debate and dialogue on the future of Europe.
Third, the member-states had to be made accountable for the present
situation of distrust ordinary citizens feel toward the EU. The referenda
were first and foremost the responsibility of the member-states (Wallström
2005a, p. 9). The Commission would help the member states but the conditions of this assistance had to be set by the member states. For instance,
the Commission had reformed the Europe Direct network, which was
composed of 400 offices in the whole of the Union. Starting from May 1,
2005, the 20 Europe Info offices of the Finnish Foreign Ministry had been
integrated into the Commission-led Europe Direct Information network.
Financially, this meant that the Commission would pay 300.000 euros a
year to help the Finnish Foreign Ministry run this network.
Fourth, the other European institutions, especially the Council and
the Parliament, had to be involved in the implementation of the new
communication strategy. In Wallström’s mind, these institutions were
coresponsible for the current state of affairs. The European Parliament
had, on its own initiative, already published a report on the EU’s information and communication strategy (Herrero-Tejero 2005) and had
already set up its own television channel (Männikkö 2005, p. 15).
Conclusions
The strategy of the European Commission was to take charge of the coordination of communication between political institutions and citizens,
directly thus challenging the monopoly of political legitimacy held by
national institutions and media. In exceptional circumstances, the
Commission was trying to renew itself as a political rather than technocratic institution. The constitutional crisis that was looming might offer
the Commission an opportunity to boost its strategy of metamorphosis.
But in the European Commission itself, opinions differed concerning the
right strategy (European Commission 2005).
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The Commission’s new communication strategy failed miserably. The
principles of the reform initiated by Wallström were threefold: strengthen
interinstitutional cooperation, create structural partnerships with
member-­states and make sure that the citizens get the information necessary on the Commission’s policies. Admitting that reform in the EU was
always piecemeal and ad hoc, Wallström conceded that structural reform
of communication culture was a long-term process, involving actors
within the Commission and outside. This double reform—institutional
and communicative—has had little effect on the actual practices and
behavior in the complex and dynamic EU polity. However, reforms
would have required strong organizational capabilities to ‘stabilize attention, provide adequate analysis, mobilize resources and cope with resistance’ (Olsen 2001, p. 12). Unfortunately for Wallström, the Commission
was not the center that could change the European political order. The
relationship it had with the Council was crucial. Ideally, the EU as a
political organization would be such that adaptation and learning would
form normal parts of political and administrative practices. The communication culture prevalent in the Commission would just evolve and
adapt itself to a changing environment. However, there did not seem to
be a consensus on the institutionalized process by which this adaptation
could be done. The shared concepts and cognitive frameworks were simply missing. The new communication strategy could be seen as an attempt
to create a common set of political concepts and cognitive scripts that
would condition the development both of European Union public policies and of democracy in the European Union.
The broader question addressed in the context of the links between
supranational segmented publics and national audiences was that between
scholarly discourse on European integration and ‘profane’ discourse, that
is between discourses constructed on the basis of theoretical and specialized arguments and constructions forged by the everyday concerns of
ordinary European citizens. Was there any interaction between the two?
This question links with that of the various theories of European integration. What type of resonance can academic theories find among the
‘spontaneous’ theories held by the national publics? If scholarly theories
are disjointed from everyday life, they have the advantage of creating a
distance between words and worlds which enables, in its turn, a critique
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of the actual state of affairs. This distance and objectivity is in danger
when intellectuals descend on the ladder of abstraction. However, as the
intervention by Habermas and Derrida demonstrates, the advantage will
be the possibility to formulate a critique of the current political situation,
a critique that might be taken into account and thus have political effects.
Notes
1. Some of these questions have been raised by previous studies. See for
instance, Baisnée 2004, pp. 153–76 and Smith 2004a.
2. These include bilingualism (Finnish and Swedish), elites’ high level of linguistic capital and a long-term specialization in cultural importation.
3. The Spring 2005 Standard Eurobarometer no. 63 showed that ‘people in
Europe today are more critical of the Union’. The image of the European
Union seemed to be deteriorating (–3 points to the previous barometer)
(Standard Eurobarometer 63: Spring 2005).
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de Swaan, A. (2001). Words of the World. The Global Language System. Cambridge:
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Derrida, J., & Habermas, J. (2003). Nach dem Krieg: Die Wiedergeburt
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Habermas, J. (2001). The Postnational Constellation. Political Essays. Cambridge:
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6
Processes of Differentiation of Political
Power in the EU
In this chapter, my intention is to start with reflections based on personal
experiences and the difficulties of studying the EU. I will then go on to
present some of the research that develops a political sociology perspective to European integration and political power. Key concepts include
structural differentiation and stratification. The idea is to look at European
integration as a process of structural differentiation and stratification,
which provides politicians and civil servants new power resources. In this
transnational political ‘market’, old resources tied to the nation-state,
resources like political experience and power, are exchanged into newer
resources tied to the EU. In other words, something old such as a national
political career is converted into something new, like for instance a career
in the European Parliament.
The Difficulty of Talking About the EU
As chief editor of Politiikka, the journal of the Finnish Political Science
Association, I published an editorial titled ‘On the difficulties of talking
about the EU’. I argued that in Finnish society, it was ­difficult to talk
© The Author(s) 2018
N. Kauppi, Toward a Reflexive Political Sociology of the European Union,
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71002-0_6
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naturally about the EU that Finland had joined in 1995, not to mention
to study critically EU –politics. There were a number of reasons for this.
The first one relates to the modernization myth, a kind of political catching up, which is the same type of mechanism as economic catch-up in
explaining economic development. Influential individuals presented EU
membership as a rare good that everybody wanted, the apex and benchmark of political development. The EU was a political project which had,
despite its shortcomings, simply monopolized the political imagination
and hijacked the future. For a long time, there were no alternatives, or if
they existed nobody dared defend them, so that we were either in favor of
the EU or against it. Skeptics were quickly branded in public debate as,
first opponents of the EU, and then as retarded individuals who were not
up to date on events. The dogs barked, but the caravan went on. This
despite what Hegel had said that in order to change reality one would
have to first be able to imagine a different reality.
Science fiction provides an example of how our perception of the future
reflects what we think of today. During one of my lectures at the University
of Helsinki on theories of European integration, I asked the students why
they were interested in European integration theories because a priori the
topic was not the most interesting one there was. Most replies were related
to the EU’s economic importance or to individual careers. However, a
Korean student said that the reason why she was interested in the EU was
Star Trek. She was a big fan of Star Trek. It had the good and bad guys.
The United Federation of Planets (UFP) and USS Enterprise and Captain
Kirk, were the good guys. Apparently, Gene Roddenberg, the creator of
the series, saw UFP as a UN-like organization that promoted the good.
The Korean student saw EU in a similar manner. The bad guys were antidemocratic, tribal, attached to a bygone age that included such saber rattlers as Klingons, Dominions, Cardassians and others. For her, Star Trek
and Captain Kirk represented the forces of good in the world, a hope for
a better world. Maybe it was her exteriority to Europe that made her see
this fundamental reality of European politics.
It follows from this polarized moral setup that despite Brexit it would
indeed be strange if, for instance, Finland seriously wanted to exit the
EU. This macro-level mechanism reminds us of bifurcation mechanism
in world culture theory (Meyer 2010): the pressures to adopt certain
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political forms of organization such as EU institutions are enormous, so
that adaptation distinguishes certain sections of the social order from
other sectors. An extreme example is the so-called Potemkin facade. This
refers to Potemkin, Catherine the Great’s advisor, who created a ‘model
village’ which he presented to the empress. It was supposed to convince
Catherine that Russia was indeed a bountiful society where everyone
lived happily. Potemkin sought to create the impression that his reality
reflected true reality. Similarly, the pressures to be part of the EU club are
such that the illusion of membership (isomorphic institutions and the
same policies) must be produced, irrespective of a genuine desire to
belong to it.
Another reason why the EU is a ‘hot potato’ is that various political
and economic interests are tied to it. These steer the scope and depth of
public discussion. For instance, the ownership of national daily newspapers and various political pressures influence the ways a relatively free
press has to take into account the interests of the political establishment.
This was particularly evident in June 2013 with the so-called Cahuzac
case in France. The issue concerned European tax havens and the EU’s
efforts to control them. The mainstream press (Le Monde, Libération, Le
Figaro …) had for months failed to seriously investigate the allegations
according to which the Socialist Budget Minister Jérôme Cahuzac had a
secret bank account in Switzerland. The independent Internet publication Mediapart instead continued publishing on the question for several
weeks, with the result that finally Cahuzac had to resign, admitting publicly that he really had a secret account in Switzerland. The mutual interdependence of politics and publicity sometimes leads to outright
censorship, which is nevertheless quite rare, and self-censorship, which is
much more common. In the EU, to this problem of the freedom of the
press has to be added the relative independence of decision making.
Politicians negotiate behind closed doors in Brussels and report on these
negotiations in the member-countries. These stories do not always coincide. The danger is that the person speaking freely stands out from the
crowd and even a slight deviation is seen as a critique of ‘common sense’,
which is by definition suspicious.
Many political careers are directly dependent on the EU, which has
become a ‘political war booty’ of member-states. Public discussions
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revolve around issues such as who is going to follow Olli Rehn as Finland’s
‘representative’ in the EU Commission. And then what will happen to
him—will he become Prime Minister or perhaps land on a major international post? What about the European Parliament? Among the members of Club Finland (by this I mean the decision makers in different
sectors of the national community), a seat in the European Parliament in
2017 is appreciated, as are institutions like the European Central Bank
(ECB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
(EBRD). The EBRD has seen a number of important Finnish politicians,
such as the Bank of Finland’s Erkki Liikanen and the president of the
Republic Sauli Niinistö, on its board. The problem is that critical discussion does not contribute to these political careers. In other words, scholarly independence does not back the interests of the political establishment
and their definition of the national interest. Therefore, critical discourse
is not encouraged.
In Finland, as in many other European states, university research has
been since the 1800s part of the building of the nation, and especially
the social sciences have had a key role in promoting the establishment’s
political interests. In Finland, some attempts to create a relatively independent intelligentsia have existed, such as the organization Helsinki
Forum at the turn of the millennium. The national radio and TV
Company YLE awarded its Bright spot prize to Helsinki Forum in
2002 for independent thinking. Before it was closed down in 2005,
Helsinki Forum had attributed twice its Critical European Prize, in
2000 to Czech dissident and founder of the journal Lettre Internationale
Antonin Liehm (1924–) and in 2002 to Finnish philosopher Georg
Henrik von Wright (1916–2003), successor to Wittgenstein as professor
of philosophy at Cambridge University. But more permanent funding
for this project was not found. Symptomatically even the archives of the
association went ‘by accident’ into the trash: it was simply not seen as a
positive value.
The third reason why it is difficult to talk about the EU is that critical
research and public debate on the EU is dependent on the EU itself. In
other words, the metalanguage on the EU produced by researchers and
critical citizens is dependent on the object language, that is the EU’s own
discourses. The distance between the two is often nonexistent, and in
Processes of Differentiation of Political Power in the EU
111
addition, these two levels are continuously mixed. Information on the
ECB’s decision making is impossible to obtain. To quote Jürgen
Habermas, knowledge interest which is typical of scholarly work is mixed
with the practical interest which is typical of government and politics
(Habermas 1976). Or, to use Kant’s concepts (Kant 1988/1789), it is
difficult to distinguish between the freedom of independent knowledge
and the authority which seeks to limit it.
With the exception of the ERC (European Research Council), the
EU’s financial backing of research almost always serves political goals. It
is not so much independent study than reporting that is financed. For
example, within the framework of studies funded by INTERREG, the
condition for funding is that they serve certain explicit goals. All EU
funding is not of this type, but today pressures to instrumentalize science
are great. This is reflected in, for instance, the fate of the European Science
Foundation (ESF). A pioneer organization, it’s parameters of action and
budget have been cut down. Today the main bulk of its operations have
been transferred to a new, Brussels-based organization, Science Europe,
which is more tightly controlled by the main funders. The problem is also
the fact that while the new Horizon 2020 program for the years 2014–20
funds research for 80 billion euros, the funding for the social sciences is
diminishing.
The fourth reason why it is so difficult to talk about the EU openly is
that it does not fit into existing common-sense categories. Star Trek and
the EU are both going ‘where no man has gone before’. The EU is both
inside and outside Finland, simultaneously indoors and outdoors. It is
international and national politics. It is both a bird and a fish. Since the
beginning, European integration has mixed nation-state terminology
with terminology developed in some member-states, such as French borrowed terms that are foreign to the vocabulary of other member-states.
Examples are the ‘high authority’ (haute autorité) or ‘Commissioner’
(Commissaire). The European Community has thus sought to establish a
political distance between itself and the nation-state. However, 60 years
of integration has led to the fact that the EU has increasingly embraced
nation-state terminology and symbols, the national anthem, the flag and
so on. Paradoxically, the EU as a supranational entity is the highest
achievement of the nation-state as an organizational political model.
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Political agency plays an important role in all institutional dynamics (a
classical analysis is found in Berger and Luckmann 1966). Taking this
into account requires that political institutions are not presented as if
they were free from human activity, as some ‘realists’ or ‘neorealists’ do,
detaching the individual from institutions and transforming him/her
into a universal, context-free carrier of rationality. In this scenario, ordinary citizens are at most uninvited guest stars that interfere, with their
rioting and electoral behavior (or more precisely its lack), with ‘normal’
political activity. Epistemological choices, such as rational choice theory,
have far-reaching implications. The objectification (they are like this and
do not change) and personification (the institution is reduced to an individual) of political institutions are challenges for political science.
Through these frameworks, the relationship between the EU and its policies is presented as being natural, inevitable and unproblematic. Options
are considered as being illusions. In reality, however, there are always
alternatives. Think of the current economic crisis. In 2012, the French
laughed to Socialist President Francois Hollande’s proposals for reorganizing the European economy by increasing government spending. A few
years later it was not such a stupid idea.
he Differentiation and Stratification
T
of the European Parliament as an Example
For some, politics is a profession that has historically evolved first in the
nation-state, and now in various transnational contexts. Professionalization
is a process that consists of the development of groups, discourses and
knowledge, following the division of labor in a given society. It touches
the spheres of politics, to use Max Weber’s term, as well as the economy,
administration or other areas of relatively specialized social activity. But
there are differences. The occupation of a politician is not just any job.
Unlike administration, politics does not guarantee a job for life. In fact,
Members of Parliament are temporary workers, who are selected for a
fixed period to perform their duties. This causes a lot of problems.
Against this background, the debate in France on the simultaneous
occupation of several political positions is revealing. Politicians as an
Processes of Differentiation of Political Power in the EU
113
interest group wish to allow the simultaneous occupation of several jobs
while the public’s sense of justice is against it. In order to avoid temporary
work, politicians may seek to become officials of the European
Commission, the UN or some other international organization, to move
to the more lucrative private sector (pantouflage is a French term that
describes this political strategy) or to the university to teach.
Technocratic political organizations, such as the European Commission,
unite the political and the academic. Nearly 30 percent of the Commissioners
have been doctorates. The former head of the Commission, José Manuel
Barroso, is a former professor of international politics from the University
of Lisbon. Former Vice President Olli Rehn is a former teacher of political science at the University of Helsinki. The third popular area of specialization after international politics and political science is economics.
For some, such as the Social Democrat Erkki Liikanen and the
Conservative Sauli Niinistö, the financial world is particularly attractive
and provides political rewards (the Bank of Finland for Liikanen and the
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development for Niinistö).
There are structural relationships between EU institutions such as the
ECB and the business world. The current president of the European
Central Bank (ECB), Mario Draghi, is a former Goldman Sachs employee.
The short-term jobs characteristic of political positions means that the
space in which professional politicians move during their career is not
limited to the political world and to the national political field. The
supranational and national levels complement each other. But this observation does not mean that the EU has not become an operating environment for more professional political players. To paraphrase Max Weber,
some of these professional players have become Europaberufpolitiker—
professional European politicians.
The perspective I would like to develop here will not only provide an
alternative to the basic textbooks (see for example, Hix and Høyland
2011) but also tools to explore the integration of power structures and
processes, or in other words, the differentiation and stratification of
power in certain institutional configurations (Kauppi 2013, see also
Kauppi and Madsen 2013). This requires the analysis of various roles
such as the different political groups, officials of the Commission, the
European Parliament or committees and the European Parliament
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N. Kauppi
r­apporteurs for instance. It also requires examining political positions,
discourses, and debates. Differentiation and stratification lead to the formation of dominant positions and political discourses. According to the
official rhetoric of the EU, the European Parliament is a unique political
experiment in the history of the world and one of the brightest achievements of European integration. Its members are elected by direct election
from the European Union member-states. It is, of course, a paradox that
even though the European Parliament has gained political power, especially in the Lisbon Treaty, it is still relatively weak compared to institutions like the European Commission and the Council. Not well known
among the voters, it is often neglected by leading politicians.
Over the years, the European Parliament has, however, come to represent to some politicians an alternative political career. In France, for
example, female politicians have used the European elections to integrate
into the national political system. Regional and local politicians have also
benefited from the development of the European Parliament. The
European Parliament has given them the opportunity to bypass the
national political center and its power structures and to use the EU’s economic and political resources, such as the Structural Funds. This has happened in France, but even more so in federal states such as Germany. The
career strategies of some local and regional politicians have been consistent with the European Union’s attempts to create, in the name of the
principle of subsidiarity, effective ‘Euroregions’ that support the EU in its
tug of war with the member-states. The third group that has benefited
from European integration are the politicians in extremist parties. French
Front National founder Jean-Marie Le Pen has been sitting in the
European Parliament since 1984, using this as a base for his national
political game.
Several researchers have made similar structural studies of the European
Commission and the European Court of Justice (see, for example, Page
1997; Mangenot 1998; Madsen 2011). These studies provide us with
important information about how political careers develop in the
European Union and how they have changed its institutions. These studies show that a separate European political class does not exist for the
simple reason that political careers combine many spheres of activity vertically at national and supranational (the local council, the national
Processes of Differentiation of Political Power in the EU
115
­ arliament, the Senate, the government, political party organization, the
p
European Parliament, the European Commission, and so on), as well as
horizontal or sectoral levels (academe, government, the European Central
Bank, Goldman Sachs, and so on).
Conclusion
I have tried to show that the processes of European integration and differentiation deepen our understanding of the EU’s social dynamics. The
European Parliament is an example of how practices and resources shape
institutionalization as well as the interaction between individuals, groups
and political institutions. A political sociology approach also helps us see
the effects of the latent resources-based structures, which put groups and
individuals into unequal positions in EU institutions. Social resources are
unevenly distributed. The effects of this deep structure in shaping policy
outputs should be promptly investigated.
Concepts such as differentiation and stratification may help us understand the development of supranational institutions such as the European
Union, their roles and resources. These concepts are useful when we try
to make sense of political and economic developments. This approach
has its limits and should be developed in two ways. The first is the interaction of the various changes over time. Institutions function in a dynamic
interaction in more or less volatile environments. Analysis of several,
simultaneous and often conflicting changes is difficult. The second one is
taking into account the historical dimension. Historical processes are
never clear cut.
Bibliography
Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The Social Construction of Reality.
Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Habermas, J. (1976). Tieto ja intressi. In R. Tuomela & I. Patoluoto (Eds.),
Yhteiskuntatieteiden filosofiset perusteet: Osa I (pp. 118–141). Gaudeamus:
Helsinki.
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Hix, S., & Høyland, B. (2011). The Political System of the European Union.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kant, I. (1988/1798). Le conflit des facultés en trois sections. Paris: Vrin.
Kauppi, N. (Ed.). (2013). A Political Sociology of Transnational Europe. Essex:
ECPR Press.
Kauppi, N., & Madsen, M. R. (Eds.). (2013). Transnational Power Elites. The
New Professionals of Governance, Law and Security. Abingdon: Routledge.
Madsen, M. R. (2011). La genèse de l’Europe des droits de l’homme: Enjeux
juridiques et stratégies d’Etat (1945-1970). Strasbourg: Presses universitaires
de Strasbourg.
Mangenot, M. (1998). Une école européenne d’administration ? L’improbable
conversion de l’ENA à l’Europe. Politix, 43, 7–32.
Meyer, J. (2010). World Society, Institutional Theories and the Actor. Annual
Review of Sociology, 36, 1–20.
Page, E. C. (1997). People Who Run Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Part II
Reflexive Action and Knowledge
Production
7
Intellectual Power in Europe
In a review of a philosophical essay, a renowned mathematician expressed
his emotion after observing that the author of this essay had made several
errors of fact. According to him, in the natural sciences, errors would
have immediate and disastrous consequences: satellites would fall from
the sky, bridges would collapse and skyscrapers would crumble. But in
the humanities, it is quite another thing. Mistakes are without consequences, which explains why humanists and intellectuals could be imprudent and even irresponsible.
The judgment of the mathematician raises an essential question, that
of the status and importance of intellectual discourse. Indeed, intellectuals are often academics, journalists or writers. Their role is to enlighten
politically, ideologically or morally the current issues in accessible, and
therefore nonspecialized, language. Most of the time, being an intellectual is not a profession, rather a part-time career or even a hobby. Why
then take seriously what they say? Do we need their speech? Why not,
indeed, leave the solution to our social and political problems to technocrats and scholars?This is what seems to affirm the American philosopher
Mark Lilla who, in his book entitled The Reckless Mind (Lilla 2003), attributes the irresponsibility of intellectuals to a weakness of character that
© The Author(s) 2018
N. Kauppi, Toward a Reflexive Political Sociology of the European Union,
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71002-0_7
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leads to a lack of moderation. The naive adventures in politics of Martin
Heidegger and Michel Foucault, the first supporting the regime of Hitler
and the second that of Khomeini, serve as scarecrows. The message: intellectual activity, instead of being rational and morally high, is easily transformed into moral failure and political catastrophe.
Should we then conclude that intellectuals, too dangerous because
they are irresponsible or politically naive, should play no role in our
increasingly technocratic societies? Not at all. On the contrary, I would
like to defend the position that the development of the division of labor
and the increasing complexity of our societies accentuate the need for a
discourse that unites specialists—mathematicians, engineers, humanists—
and the public. Our modern societies are in fact constantly haunted by
the despair and political apathy which are partly due to the fragmentation of knowledge relating to political and social life. This reflects the
decline in political participation as well as the discontent with the effects
of globalization and social reforms, such as those concerning pensions.
These phenomena are, in my opinion, wholly related to the status of
intellectuals as producers of public discourse.
Social facts are certainly not physical facts, but they are not, however,
less restrictive. Intellectual power is equivalent to the power of ideas, or
more precisely to the power of ideas that become power ideas, to use the
term of Alfred Fouillée, ideas such as freedom or equality that move individuals and motivate them to act together to change their state and the
world. Universalized, these ideas can only be refuted by other ideas.
I would like to concentrate on two socio-cultural aspects, which form
a matrix, the transformation of the role of intellectuals, a substantial
aspect, the question of intellectual culture, and a rather formal one, that
of the public sphere as the space in which the actual debates take place.
Two Intellectual Cultures
Intellectuals are part of our democratic culture. This tradition requires that
the public be informed about the issues that affect them and that they can
think for themselves. Let’s go back a bit in history. A little more than 2000
years ago, philosophers and politicians developed the idea of autonomy.
Intellectual Power in Europe
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Hitherto, human societies had been governed by the temporal representatives of the gods, priests, pharaohs or kings. Their words were those of God:
an unjust God was an impossibility. The revolutionary idea of these philosophers consisted in thinking that humans had to govern themselves and
decide for themselves what they wanted. Citizens could, at any time and on
any subject, challenge those who governed them. This idea of independent
reflection, very generous and optimistic, poses an uncertain advantage, for
if things did not go as planned, the gods could no longer be blamed, as
before. Citizens were free now, and therefore themselves responsible for
their mistakes. If the autonomy which the citizens assumed allowed them
to think and act as they wished, the prospect of failure and a sense of helplessness would also be omnipresent, as history has repeatedly confirmed.
As a result, knowledge about life in political society became public. A
few millennia later, an independent press, a written Constitution and
freedom of speech were added to this idea of autonomy and public
debate. During the Enlightenment, the political role of the educated
public, united in Europe by a common language, French, increased, leading to the development of a public sphere, to use the term of the most
prominent European intellectual of the moment, the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. This educated group demanded that knowledge
and political participation be civil rights and not social privileges as
before. The principle of autonomy meant that citizens had the right to
discuss issues that affected them and to be informed. This principle and
ideal of autonomy took a new turn when communism and socialism, as
responses to the growing poverty and exploitation of the popular classes,
were developed in the nineteenth century. In France, the Dreyfus affair of
1898 crystallized this development, the empowerment of a social stratum
of educated individuals, the intellectuals whose social function was now
to defend justice and freedom.
This common history that I have just outlined conceals the fact that
two intellectual cultures coexist today in Europe, that of the independent
intellectual and that of the functional intellectual. These two cultural
models obviously coexist in varying degrees, cases where one dominates
the other to which the two models coexist.
France is a country where intellectual culture is well developed and
where the independent, oppositional or critical intellectual reigns. I will
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examine the characteristics of this intellectual culture by a specific example, that of the sociologist and professor at the Collège of France Pierre
Bourdieu, who died on January 23, 2002. Symptomatically, the
announcement of his death was published on the front page of Le Monde.
The last time that the death of an individual had been announced on the
first page was that of the President of the French Republic Mitterrand.
Pierre Bourdieu was not an ordinary academic but a celebrated intellectual, a part of the national heritage and, therefore someone who represented the French tradition of independent reflection. Typically, Bourdieu
saw his responsibility as an intellectual to provide the ‘dominated’, in his
own jargon, with the instruments to combat their own political, economic and social exclusion. For him, sociology was a martial art, a technique of self-defense. This intellectual posture took many forms: the
production of school work, participation in demonstrations, the signing
of petitions. Paradoxically, it is possible to be both a radical intellectual
and a national icon. This French intellectual culture can undoubtedly
explain the success of radicalisms of all kinds, from existentialism to
structuralism.
Since his anthropological work in Algeria in the late 1950s, Bourdieu
had been conscious of the political character of his academic work. He
saw himself essentially as a critical observer of political and social life, of
French colonial policies in Algeria in the 1950s (e.g. his book Le sens
pratique), the French educational system and its lack of egalitarianism
(e.g. Les héritiers), the effects of the class structure of French society in his
most well-known work, Distinction, and since the second half of the
1990s, of globalization and Contre-feux. Exactly because of this political
subtheme, Bourdieu’s academic work has had a broader resonance in
French society, where the role of the educated public is central. Due to
the merger of the educated public and academics, specialized work like
Distinction could become successful in bookstores. This unity finds its
basis in a common perception. This audience is interested in intellectual
questions because it shares with authors like Bourdieu a school education
and often an ideological and political vision for example concerning the
place and role of France in the world.
Despite this political and cultural dimension, until the 1990s,
Bourdieu’s work was limited geographically to the francophone countries
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123
and the social sciences. It took an intellectual turn of European dimension in the 1990s. Bourdieu participated in the activities of the parliament of writers in Strasbourg, created a European magazine of books,
Liber, which at one time appeared in 12 European languages. The result:
he became, with the English sociologist Anthony Giddens and Habermas,
a leading European intellectual.
In the very Rousseauist political vision that Bourdieu had, each generation is faced with new challenges and new forms of social, economic
and political exclusion and marginalization. For example, globalization
and European integration have created neoliberal economic policies,
leading to the precarization of workers and the increase in unemployment. Consequently, the work of the academic militant as an intellectual
was to invent and apply, on the basis of his specific competence, new
forms of social intervention.
Bourdieu’s intellectual activism is thus informed by a rather traditional
narrative, that of the intellectual as a man (yes!) to help the powerless
against those in power, on the side of the dominated in front of the dominators in his own terminology. Some would like to separate from one
another a purely academic phase of Bourdieu, which lasted until the
1980s, from a militant or intellectual phase, in which are included more
popular works, such as those dealing with globalization or television. In
my opinion, this artificial division prevents us from perceiving the close
links between intellectual and academic culture in France and to understand what Bourdieu himself meant when he saw himself as a militant
academic or a specific intellectual, a term Michel Foucault used to
describe his own public status in distinction to that of the total intellectual represented by Jean-Paul Sartre.
In this French tradition, intellectuals are critical thinkers, often politically on the left. In general, they are neither functional intellectuals at the
service of political parties nor interpreters of texts and discourses as in the
theory of the British sociologist of Polish origin Zygmunt Bauman.
Obviously, no one is totally independent. In this model, independence is
conceived as an autonomy vis-a-vis the political and political authorities
in the ordinary sense of the term. Intellectual activity must be relatively
detached from the democratic politics of parties, despite the fact that a
good part of French intellectuals are professors of universities, that is to
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say, state employees. Like the republican state, intellectuals are the representatives and defenders of universal values such as freedom and equality.
Since the state pretends to incarnate these values, there is no contradiction between universalism and cultural particularism. Thanks to this
independence, the duty of intellectuals is, like that of the madman in the
medieval court, to say what others do not dare to say. They are, by definition, provocateurs or revealers of false appearances.
In the ‘eastern’ countries, Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia and
Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the Soviet Union represented the critical or
oppositional intellectual. In their cases, responsibility took on a new
dimension, for it is not unusual for those who disagree with the official
truth to be labeled as irresponsible, counter revolutionary or simply mad.
In some political regimes, being irresponsible is therefore the true sign of
an intellectual.
In France, the constant danger which haunts the critical intellectual is
that he becomes an ersatz politician, that is to say a second-rate politician
who would abandon his function of independent criticism for political
and / or personal gains. He would be more an intellectual representing
specific interests than an intellectual raising unpleasant questions and
offering critical analysis on topical issues.
I now come to the second model of the intellectual in Europe, what
I shall call the functional intellectual. Historically distinct from the
critical model that has fostered opposition to established powers, this
model dominates in northern European countries, where the political
and intellectual history differs from that of the countries of the east or
the south. For example, in Finland the intellectual discourse developed
in the nineteenth century was an integral part of the national struggle
against Russia. An adviser of princes or, more recently, in public service,
the functional intellectual, is for the most part, employed in state universities, or works for elected representatives at national or even local
level. Intellectual politics is, therefore, subordinated to democratic politics at the national level. For example, the British sociologist Anthony
Giddens considers his mission as contributing to the development of
democracy by providing expert services to elected officials rather than
to criticize the system from the outside or its margins. Instead of criticism or a reactive intellectual posture, the functional intellectual is
Intellectual Power in Europe
125
­ roactive and participating. Giddens served as an advisor to Prime
p
Minister Tony Blair and was one of the architects of the Third Way, an
alternative to communism and capitalism.
Both the critical intellectual and the functional intellectual have an
interest in the general interest. But the critical intellectual sees exteriority,
real or imaginary, as a sine qua non condition for an intellectual activity
worthy of its name while the functional intellectual contributes to political life by advising those who are democratically elected. The first represents and defends the universal values directly; the second defends those
same values, incarnated by democratically elected politicians. These social
functions correspond to two different styles: the search of opposition and
distinction that can slip into abstraction and theory on the one hand, and
consensus and public service which can lead to ultrapragmatism and
compromise on the other. The leitmotif of the critical intellectual could
be that of the historian Gustave de Coulanges: ‘I propose nothing;
I expose’. For the functional intellectual, this rather reactive and negative
posture is not enough.
In both models, the social role of nonspecialized public discourse was
formed not only in relation to conceptions of the role of ideas and political power but also in relation to the material infrastructure which provides a large part of the conditions of possibility of intellectual activity. Is
it symbolically and materially feasible to be an intellectual? The size of the
public sphere and the characteristics of the public determine whether the
professionals of symbolic production can live off this activity (market
intellectual) or whether they have to seek another subsistence, such as
that of an academic (in France this would be a state intellectual) or a
journalist for instance.
This question of specialization is quite central to the understanding of
intellectual life. For example, academic specialization in terms of academic disciplines leads to a different sensitivity to that of writers and
journalists. Roland Posner in his book The Public Intellectual. A Study in
Decline (Posner 2003), attributes the decline of American intellectuals
precisely to this lack of vision and education. Instead of being journalists
or writers with broad views, they are today specialized academics. The
scenario of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann is even more somber. According to him, specialization develops linearly. Mathematicians
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speak only to mathematicians, engineers to engineers, and sociologists to
sociologists. There would be no common space left.
European Public Spheres
For a long time, researchers and politicians spoke of the European public sphere, a transposition of the national level to the supranational level
of the public sphere as a space where debates take place. In reality,
Europe consists of a multitude of public spheres, ranging from the
smallest in size, like the Finnish public sphere, to the largest, the
English-language public sphere. These public spheres are limited by the
language , or the languages, used. Those languages whose influence
extends beyond geographical borders, such as English or French, are
linked to a colonial or imperial history. Since the 1990s, two major
transformations have taken place with regard to European public
spheres. The first development was the considerable expansion of the
English-language public sphere at the expense of the French and
German public spheres above all. This is not only due to the success of
popular American culture. At all levels of European societies, English
has become the lingua franca, whether we like it or not. In European
schools, this is the most widely studied language. European professional
organizations communicate in English. In the European institutions,
English is ahead of French, a language traditionally associated with
European integration. At the European Central Bank in Frankfurt am
Main, Germany, there is only one official language, English. At the
same time, English-speaking European media has also developed:
Euronews on television, newspapers such as the Financial Times, the
publications of the European Union and so on.
This development has its advantages and disadvantages. The great
advantage is that finally there is a common language, a language that the
British historian Timothy Garton Ash calls the ELF, English as Lingua
Franca, which is distinct from American or British English. The main
disadvantage is that certain groups and types of linguistic and cultural
capital are favored to the detriment of others. But any social transformation inevitably favors some groups at the expense of others.
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The second significant development since the 1990s is the Internet,
which has created a virtual public sphere where debates are founded on a
range of social and political issues. The new social movements against
globalization, such as ATTAC, have succeeded in using this medium to
disseminate their ideas, thus redefining the criteria for political debate
and creating a ‘global opinion’ for a social criticism of the established
order. The expansion of the English-speaking public sphere is obviously
linked to this technological development. At the same time, this virtual
space unites the national public spheres by linking them to cultural and
global changes that have taken place after the collapse of the Soviet
Union. According to some, these changes mean that Europe has become
less European. In a sense, it is true. But in another sense, if these changes
unify national cultures without removing physical borders, there might
be, as a result, more Europe.
According to Jürgen Habermas, Europe needs a common public sphere
for one simple reason: the reinforcement of the European bureaucracy in
Brussels has not been accompanied by the development of a transnational public opinion that includes the media and NGOs. In fact, decisions are increasingly taken at European level, while political legitimacy
remains at the national level. However, in our conception of democracy,
the State and its bureaucracy need a counter-balance, the civil society,
which serves as an intermediary between the people and the elites. The
problem for Habermas is precisely that this European public opinion is
for the time being nonexistent because there is no strictly speaking
European people or demos that would be able to provide the European
Union with political legitimacy—without which it cannot survive. The
Union, and therefore the executive elites of the member-countries, presidents and prime ministers, do not want to change this state of affairs,
partly because political culture is seen as a national and not a European
issue. Indeed, the economy has integrated the most, culture the least.
If a common European area could be a counter-weight to transfers of
political and economic power from the national to the European level, its
creation should not prevent the development of national public spheres.
Indeed, the development of a European public space cannot be an excuse
for not improving the conditions for critical debate at the national level.
The Dutch sociologist Abraam de Swaan sees only one possibility: two
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public spheres, one national and one English speaking and European.
But the European public sphere is useless if there is not more interest in
European questions than there is today.
Conclusions
Intellectual discourse is an integral part of a functioning democracy.
Political and cultural contexts form a matrix which influences the forms
of intellectual power and of ideas. If the ideas were so insignificant that
the mathematician I quoted at the beginning of this chapter suggests,
they would probably not be discussed. Why are nonspecialized and
widely diffused generalized ideas important? This is because social reality
is dependent on citizen activity; that is, it does not exist independently of
our thoughts and actions. The facts of society are not facts of nature
because facts of society, in order to exist, must be reproduced by successive generations. The ideas that form the basis of this collective action are
invented by professionals in ideas, writers, journalists and intellectuals.
These ideas represent theories of social reality, which are both descriptive
and prescriptive. They describe the reality more or less well. But from the
moment when some people seize them, they create something new. Power
ideas therefore have, under certain conditions, the power of social
transformation.
Transfers of power in France and Europe from national to European
and even global levels have led to a sense of powerlessness and political
apathy. This is evidenced by the antiglobalization demonstrations, the
rise of populist parties and the modest voting rate in the European elections. Now more than ever, there is a need for a nonspecialist, generalist
discourse that discusses publicly the major current issues. Democracy
requires constant vigilance and efforts to restore the confidence of citizens
in the political system. This constant maintenance activity means that
democracy is never achieved once and for all: it is an incomplete project
rather than a permanent one.
Today, Europe seems to provide a force, perhaps the only one, which
excites the imagination of both politicians and intellectuals. According to
the beautiful formula of the German journalist Jürgen Kaube, Europe is
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a political structure in search of an idea. Some have dreamed of a common foreign policy uniting a political vanguard composed of countries in
the center of Europe (Kerneuropa). In this vision, Europe could avoid the
fate of a Kleineuropa, a small Europe, and finally become a player of
global scope. On the initiative of Habermas, the German daily Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung orchestrated a series of intellectual exchanges on the
renaissance of Europe between renowned thinkers such as Jacques
Derrida, Richard Rorty and Umberto Eco. According to Habermas,
demonstrations against the Iraq war had signaled the birth of a European
public sphere. Others, less optimistic, see this ad hoc orchestration by
prominent intellectuals of the great European countries as a contribution
to a Franco-Germanic political plan and a legitimation of an imperial and
dominating Europe, desirous of reconnecting with a glorious, but warlike
past. The danger of this activity is that a new Iron Curtain, this time
between western Europe and the rest of Europe, could be established.
Evidence of this seems to already emerge. Can we speak, as Habermas
and Derrida did in 2003, in the name of Europe when it does not exist?
This seems to be more difficult than ever.
Bibliography
Lilla, M. (2003). The Reckless Mind. Intellectuals in Politics. New York: New York
Review of Books.
Posner, R. A. (2003). The Public Intellectual. A Study in Decline. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
8
European Academic Identity
‘Nobody does the job for which we were formed and that we love. We spend
our time fighting to do the job for which we get paid.’
(French university teacher, in EducPros Poll 2014, my translation)
(A French website devoted to higher education published by letudiant.fr and
the weekly L’Express (http://www.letudiant.fr/educpros))
Why bother with academic identity? Why should we be interested in the
question? Why should we ask academics anything about their academic
identity? An advice given to students engaging in qualitative research and
interviews: Do not take at face value what people say about themselves.
They will always try to present themselves in the best possible light, forgetting nasty episodes and remembering the more positive ones. When
pressed on nastier points, they will hide and attempt to camouflage their
real motives, even lie to themselves. So why bother with what academics
say about their academic identity? The short answer is that academic
identities, conceptions of one’s worth and place in society as well as one’s
sense of responsibility, have been dramatically transformed. For that
© The Author(s) 2018
N. Kauppi, Toward a Reflexive Political Sociology of the European Union,
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71002-0_8
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r­ eason, academic identity might be of interest even for some nonacademics. They might find parallels in their lives.
Were Immanuel Kant with us he would not be surprised. Since the
1980s, the classical contradiction between freedom and authority he dissected in Der Streit der Fakultäten (1798) has entered a new stage. While
academics continue being ‘businessmen or technicians of learning’ (Kant
1988/1798, p. 14) subject to the whims of government (authority), the
battleground has shifted with globalization and neoliberal technologies
of power. As a result, the space where ‘reason is authorized to speak
openly’ (Kant 1988/1798, p. 17) has further shrunk and the value of
independent thinking (freedom) so prized by Kant has plummeted in the
academic stock market. In this sense, placing ‘rationality’ as one of the
main ingredients of the European model (Todorov 2005) is dangerously
misleading. It is rather the struggle between independent thinking and
the attempts to govern it that defines European ‘rationality’—its limits
and possibilities.
Globalization and neoliberalism have had a powerful impact on academic identities and the university as an institution. They have led to
growing uncertainty and mistrust, to a concentration of power in the
hands of university presidents, administrators in ministries and politicians and to the accumulation of resources by a few institutions that are
deemed excellent, widening the gap between first-class and second-class
institutions and scholars. Neoliberal reforms subordinate science to political and bureaucratic interests. In this process, key concepts of academic
activity are redefined. Because of a lack of understanding of scientific
inquiry, these dominant interests require transforming quality, excellence, autonomy and freedom—banners that have united all academics
for centuries—into governable objects, measurable or calculable numerical objectifications such as rankings and impact factors. It has meant
removing from academics the right to define excellence. Paradoxically
this mania of making science ‘understandable’ to ‘anyone’, and of making
science ‘useful’, has meant shattering the traditional scientific ethos.
Nothing seems to stop the triumph of neoliberalism in academe.
While the regime’s bureaucratic reform frenzy produces the academic
identities it needs, countries, disciplines, departments and individual
identifications vary in terms of the extent they appropriate or resist its
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well-known precepts (see Evans and Nixon 2014). Resistance to these
forces of change is unevenly distributed. In Europe, where higher education is mostly publicly funded, more resistance can be observed from the
humanities and the social sciences, from countries in whose self-image
globalization plays a modest role, from individuals operating uniquely in
their national contexts while less resistance will be found from those disciplines that are linked with economic development, business, or the
international, from those countries that are dependent culturally and
economically on globalization processes, and from individuals who desire
investing in the international. The argument of this chapter is that neoliberalism, through its bureaucratically led reform frenzy, produces not
only identitarian uncertainty amid a politically relatively unorganized
academe but also a scientifically legitimized ambivalent discourse that
confuses more than clarifies the mission of the university and research.
In terms of national higher education systems, France has been presented (and has presented itself ) as a cultural exception to the triumph of
neoliberalism. But has it really succeeded in shielding itself from the
onslaught of neoliberalism? As it is often at the margins of social phenomena that the conditions enabling its existence are visible, analysis of
the French case can be particularly instructive (see Evans and Cosnefroy
2013, for a perceptive presentation of the French system of higher education (HE)). It shows what form resistance can take.
Tensions in French Academe
A prestigious national tradition of cultural ‘exportation’ has legitimized
resistance to ‘Anglo-Saxon dominance’, including the hegemony of
English and the transformations under way. Indeed, neoliberalism cannot be disassociated from broader historical ‘culture wars’ between France
and the UK/USA. There has been for some time already a clear sentiment
that France as a cultural power is in decline, despite the fact that some
elements of French culture, luxury products such as perfumes, its cuisine
and wines, are important export items especially to East Asia. Therefore,
and in contrast to attitudes in many other European countries, in general
reforms of academe are not seen in a positive light as they are seen as
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being imposed from the outside and being part of American cultural
hegemony. But even in France, opposition to the neoliberal academic
regime has been selectively reactive more than proactive. With the appropriate reservations on the reliability of the tools used to measure quality
and excellence, a majority of politicians and university administrators
have embraced the precepts of global visibility and competition. This has
led to the adoption of grade degrees (the canonical LMD License or
Bachelor, master, doctorate) and the fusion of institutions of higher education to cut costs and to improve positions in global rankings (Hansens
2011; Kauppi 2013; Kauppi and Erkkilä 2011; Assemblée nationale
2013). University personnel and the public have been more divided
(Nourry 2014). Lower level administrators have been going along with
this movement, while teachers and researchers (a distinction that has to
be made in France where teaching and research institutions are separated
into universities/grandes écoles and research institutions like the Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique or CNRS, the French publicly
funded National Scientific Research Council) as well as public opinion
have been very critical of the reforms. This has led to the usual politics of
petitions, strikes and protests.
As for the official motives for the reform, the internationalization of
higher education and the global competition between countries and
Higher Education institutions come on top of the list. These motives are
very clear in the French law for higher education and research:
Our higher education and research system is too complex and difficult to
read … Our system has become illegible not only for national stakeholders
and users, but also for their counterparts in Europe and the world.
Simplicity is a necessity expected by everyone, which will greatly contribute to our national and international attractiveness. (Assemblée nationale
2013, p. 5, my translation)
The four goals of this new law, which for the first time in French history unites all the laws dealing with HE and research, are the following:
(1) democratize HE, improve student success, increase the percentage of
university graduates to 50 percent of the age group, (2) provide more visibility to French research in the face of the serious economic and social
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challenges, in harmony with the EU program Horizon 2020, (3) reinforce cooperation between the various actors involved in HE and research
and reduce institutional complexity, unite collegiality in the university
and excellence for all, and (4) amplify the presence of French research in
European programs and the international influence of French universities, schools and laboratories, encourage the mobility of students, teachers, administrative and technical personnel, and increase the attractiveness
of our sites. The goals also include becoming part of the EU’s ‘U-multirank’
system of qualification of HE institutions. This should enable France to
‘get rid of our dependency on international classification systems that are
not adapted to the culture and academic history of research in Europe’
(Assemblée nationale 2013, p. 16), a goal that unites protagonists and
opponents of the law worried about loss of French national prestige. The
overall aim is to correct the modest success of France in rankings such as
the Shanghai ranking and more broadly to ‘clearly replace our country
into a European and international process’ (Assemblée nationale 2013,
p. 16).
Despite the explicitly stated political will to simplify the organization
of French HE, the new French law of reform known as the Fioraso law
after the minister in charge of higher education and education, Geneviève
Fioraso, has led to a great deal of confusion and has exacerbated tensions
(Nourry 2014). In a few days, a protest on the web gathered more than
11,000 signatures. Academics are asked to compete internationally—but
at the same time their budgets are being cut. Given the official espousal
of neoliberal policy for higher education and research, the horizon of possibilities for proactive alternatives is quite limited as attempts in formulating alternative developments that would not be a return to the ‘good
old days’ have not materialized. Neoliberal precepts have hijacked the
future: at the moment, there simply are no credible, coherently formulated political alternatives. As in most European countries, the sense of
disempowerment among French academics has been aggravated by the
homogeneity of the academic scene: once the only financer, the state, cuts
its budget, there are no alternatives but to protest against these measures.
But while for academics in some other European countries as in the UK
resorting to financial support from businesses or even privatizing higher
education as in Poland are viable options, for French academics this
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would be unimaginable. Higher education is seen as a public service provided by the Republican state, not as an economic service (see Normand
2014).
Despite the gloomy general situation of the academy, to a large majority of the 2000 respondents to a 2014 French moral barometer in higher
education and research, academic work is still a source of satisfaction
(EducPros Poll 2014). This result is quite similar to that obtained in the
British publication Times Higher Education (THE), which inspired the
French survey: 81 percent of British respondents expressed satisfaction,
as 82 percent of the French respondents did. Pride in working in their
establishment was somewhat stronger in France (three-quarters positive
responses) than in Britain (two-thirds positive responses). The similarity
breaks however when it comes to discussing salaries. If 61 percent of
British academics feel that their employer offers a decent wage, the reverse
is true in France, where only 25 percent of respondents share this view.
Similarly, while 63 percent of the THE respondents are enthusiastic
about the future of their establishment only 37 percent of the French
share this feeling. The negative impact of work on health is more strongly
felt in France than in Britain (51 percent of respondents, against 32 percent) while concern for the well-being at work seems neglected in the
eyes of the French (only 33 percent believe that their institution is interested in their well-being), which is less the case in Britain (46 percent).
Finally, visions of the future differ widely between the two countries. If
63 percent of the British are enthusiastic about the future of their establishment, only 37 percent of the French share that feeling. Overall, academics on both sides of the Channel seem to still be satisfied with their
work. Divergences concerning the future and the institution might be
attributed to a general collective psychological makeup, the French being
considered more pessimistic and skeptical than the British. In terms of
the broader transformations of academic life, divergences could have to
do with a general siege mentality in France, a nearly-alone-against-theworld situation, combined with a sense that things are only getting worse,
partly because of what is happening outside France.
France has not escaped a more general depreciation of the value of
academic work, and more specifically teaching. As a French university
teacher expressed it there is:
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[a] lot of stress, little time to devote to research, many administrative
tasks…The teacher-researcher job is conducive to fragmentation. With two
pitfalls: wanting visibility at all costs and chasing the best indicators…
There is a growing dichotomy between teachers and researchers who are
genuinely researchers, and others who run the Faculty and departments or
invest in property, such as serving on the boards…. (French university
teacher EducPros 2014, my translation)
As in other European countries, bureaucratically led reforms are one of
the main reasons that academics have become to feel like strangers in
their own house:
The institutional instability of the past 10 years has led to instability in my
daily tasks, in the content of these assignments and in the form they take.
Hardly have I identified an assignment that a given task disappears or radically changes. This instability is the source of a generalized stress that can
only lead to disengagement. This stress is not related to the actors but, from
my point of view, is structural. (French university teacher EducPros 2014,
my translation)
According to some, the result has been an explosion of burnouts
(Nourry 2014). The low morale is especially clear in the humanities and
the social sciences. In the same poll, academics in the arts, letters, languages and social sciences were on average less satisfied with their condition compared to academics in law, economy and management: 39
percent compared to 61 percent.
But compared to academics in many other European countries,
French university teachers and researchers have it well. At least some jobs
are still tenured, although the overall tendency is to limit the number of
permanent positions and increase the number of temporary positions.
I am no doubt privileged, a state-employed and tenured research director at CNRS, the French National Council for Scientific Research,
working on my own research projects, teaching at the master’s level in
three different European countries, involved in administrative work at
the department level in Strasbourg and scientific management as vice
chair of a European professional organization, European Consortium
for Political Research (ECPR). This insider/outsider position gives me an
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interesting point of view to academe that highlights the often contradictory
multiplicity of selves.
In France, I am part of a shrinking group of people who are favored by
the education system, those holding permanent positions but outside the
university. Indeed, the European academic scene is all but homogeneous.
In several countries, publicly funded research institutions such as the
CNRS in France, the Academy of Finland, the Max Planck Institute in
Germany, and the academies of science in some eastern European countries, play a key role not just in research but also in higher education as
most researchers are affiliated with universities and teach in them.
However, their career development and salaries are dependent on these
nationally funded research organizations. This has been one of the problems with the Shanghai ranking, which does not fully take into account
research done outside universities and explains the reactions of some politicians in Germany and France.
The main difference with my previous job as research fellow in another,
more neoliberal European national research organization, the Academy
of Finland was that in Finland I had to reapply for my position every
three or five years, with no guarantee whatsoever that the position would
be renewed. Worrying about what would happen after the term is over
was the first thing on my mind during those 13 years of service. I have to
say that this transformation from successive fixed term positions to a permanent one has had a tremendous effect on not just my professional life
but also my family life. Having a permanent job in these neoliberal times
is possible only in a country where neoliberalism is not considered as the
greatest thing since sliced bread. But even in France, the pressures to use
one’s time doing administrative work as head of department or equivalent are very important. One of the stains on the otherwise rather rosy
picture of academic work in France is that there is, like elsewhere in
Europe, a growing population of temporary, precarious teachers and
researchers. The development of this academic lumpenproletariat is one of
the signs of the triumph of the neoliberal regime. Without job security,
they face severe limitations on the time and resources needed to conduct
research. They teach or do research for relatively low wages. It seems that
in all European countries, academic systems, as they have evolved through
the pressures of public steering and ‘performance’, clearly favor the
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shrinking group of full-time, permanent employees, at the expense of the
growing number of precarious academics. In many European countries
that are eager to take part in the global HE rat race, being a precarious
academic has even become a ‘career’ that ends in ‘retirement’. This is a
state of affairs that is in blatant contradiction with the knowledge society
hype.
Primary and Secondary Worlds
Professional identities never operate in isolation from other identities and
habitats. In my experience, one characteristic of French academic life in
contrast to some other European countries, is the fusion of professional
identity and other identities, political and social, or that of several secondary worlds. This means that integrating a new work space means that
the individual has to adapt not only to the new professional working
environment but also that the pressures to adopt similar political outlooks and lifestyles are quite strong. This tribal mentality clashes with the
neoliberal push for individualism, which finds resonance in both the traditional genius culture of scientific work and in the French high meritocratic academic environment, labeled as the oxymoron ‘aristocratic
meritocracy’. The tribal mentality is a counter-reaction to the emphasis
on individualism found in today’s academe and might also be a linked to
the rapport between professional identity and national identity, a link
that is quite strong among French academics, perhaps due to the fact that
the job market has been relatively closed to the outside world for such a
long time. This is in many ways a pity.
While I live in what many consider the geographical and even cultural
center of Europe, there seems to be a deep void in this center. I feel
European only in specific situations in which I am encouraged to activate
certain practices: when I communicate with my non-French students
from mostly what was called eastern Europe, when I travel to other parts
of Europe for meetings of the European Consortium for Political Research
(ECPR), when I take part in meetings linked with projects that are
funded by the EU or other European countries, or when I travel to other
European countries to teach. Distinct from the EU, Europe refers then to
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a specific space set (Recchi and Kuhn 2013), to places where I have been
or that I visit today and will in the future. What unites these instances are
the existence of a common symbolic reference that brings together disparate locations, although in reality I might feel culturally closer to North
American students than to students from let us say Ukraine, having spent
several years working in American universities. When I travel outside of
Europe for conferences or work, Europe takes a quite different symbolic
form, which is more identitarian as I will be considered as being European
and certain qualities will be attributed to me, even if I do not feel they
suit me. In the European context, I will just be a Finn working in France,
which is perhaps because of the rarity of the combination something
quite nondescript unless ‘Finn’ is equated with ‘Nordic’ or ‘Scandinavian’.
On the European map of cultural stereotypes, these are categories that
trigger stereotypical associations with Vikings, IKEA and blonde women
whereas for most Europeans being a Finn does not trigger specific stereotypes. In contrast, in the USA, being European has a vague sense of distinction, is associated with cultural sophistication, in the good and the
bad. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, being European was not unusual. But
in contrast the only wine bar on the main street of Bloomington, Indiana,
with about 50,000 inhabitants, home of Indiana University, was frequented in the minds of the locals only by ‘gays and Europeans’. This was
because they served red wine and not Bud light.
Working in the French academic context means that both Europe and
the EU are distant. Given that the EU has wholeheartedly embraced neoliberal precepts in its programs to reform European higher education, it
is not seen among French academics as a solution to the problems in
French higher education, mostly the lack of funding and social recognition. On the contrary, more of the EU in French academe means a worsening situation as increasing EU-level scientific funding has been an
excuse to decrease the level of domestic funding. For these reasons, in my
everyday experience as a French state employee, Europe in the form of
the EU is globally more a negative reference than a positive one. More
than on anything else everyday work reality is dependent on the more
general rapport to the local French (or Alsatian) context and French
administrative structures. While my location, Strasbourg, is on the
French-German border, the effect of this proximity on my academic work
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is weak. My employer, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
(CNRS), has common funding schemes with the German equivalent, the
DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). Besides, the University of
Strasbourg cooperates with some German and Swiss universities in the
EUCOR program.1 But the national character of higher education systems hampers these projects. At the level of the individual teacher and
researcher, this means that career ambitions and energy are directed
toward the national capital, Paris. Cooperation with colleagues a few
dozen kilometers away, but in another country, is still uninteresting,
partly because few French academics speak German, and communicating
in English, while easier for many, is still considered by most as being too
difficult. This is the reality of these grand ideas of knowledge transfer and
the development of European science.
On the border of France and Germany, the deteriorating situation of
academic life is visible at every level, starting from the micro level of the
individual scholar to European institutions at this highest level. The
European Science Foundation (ESF) was created in 1974 to develop
independent European science under the auspices of its members, the
national science organizations, and because of France’s active role in its
creation, its headquarters was set up in Strasbourg. The ESF has contributed in a dramatic way to the creation of a European science through
funding projects. Forty years later, times have changed. A competing
organization, Science Europe, has taken the relay. Located in Brussels, it
is more tightly controlled by leading financers, such as the UK and
Germany, and will no doubt be more useful for the EU in terms of producing the ‘evidence-based’ research it needs (Simon 2014). The European
Science Foundation, on the other hand, was a relatively independent
organization made up of national research councils, representing a
Kantian ideal that is under fire from all sides.
Mobility and Europe as Unfinished Adventures
There are essentially three types of academics in terms of mobility: those
who do not move, those who move occasionally, and those who move
frequently (Seddon 2014). Since the 1990s, there is less of those who do
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not move at all across national borders. Even in France, scholars are
encouraged to be international, although it means presenting a paper
once in a while in an international conference. However, ‘international’
can mean a conference organized by French scholars on French soil but
with a couple of foreign, that is non-French-speaking invitees or a few
French-speaking scholars working outside France. There is a growing
group of those who move occasionally, that is who participate in conferences or who otherwise spend short periods outside of their country of
residence. These are favored by all kinds of mobility funds, such as teacher
exchanges. Then there are those who move frequently, constituting real
transnational careers. I belong to the last group, one with those relatively
few but growing number of transnational careers. I studied in Finland
and France. After defending my dissertation, I spent altogether 25 years
in different research institutions, of which 6 years as a postdoc in the
USA at Indiana University’s Research Center for Language and Semiotic
Studies and at Harvard’s Center for European Studies, 10 as a research
fellow at the Academy of Finland and 9 as a research director at CNRS in
France.
European officials misleadingly present mobility as the magical solution to the depreciation of academe. The fact is that for mobility to be a
positive factor in the development of European universities would require
the existence of a Europewide infrastructure, comprising a European job
market and a European system of social services including pensions,
which do not exist at the moment. The reality is that while some EU
members—the most neoliberal—like the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark,
and perhaps Germany might form, at least in some of the social sciences,
the beginning of what might be called a European job market, most
national contexts are still closed and self-sufficient, sometimes even
divided into several linguistic subgroups as in Belgium, Finland and
Switzerland. Consequently, given that career development is dependent
on integration into national HE systems, mobility outside of the national
context can in reality become a trap for the individual academic. From
her point of view, mobility can lead to a double absence: an absence from
the circles both in the country of origin and in the country of residence.
Participating in common projects will be more difficult as will the accumulation of the necessary social capital for career advancement. This
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means that the idea of diffusing new knowledge and learning from best
practices in other contexts will be dependent on those in commanding
positions in national institutions. To get into those positions, however,
one needs to stay put. Individuals in commanding positions might see
new knowledge and best practices more as a threat to their own positions
than as a positive force in the development of science. Setting up cooperation across borders might be seen as an attempt to bypass national
networks and power relations.
In other words, mobility can be a serious handicap because it is not
necessarily considered as being an asset in academic competition, despite
the official rhetoric. The first victims of this real-life experiment are those
younger scholars and PhD students who take the rhetoric seriously, or
who genuinely believe in transnational cooperation, at the professional or
the personal level. More senior scholars already integrated in national
systems can accumulate transnational experience because they already
have access to considerable resources. Currently, the European academic
scene is full of individuals who have studied in another context than their
country of origin. This existential dislocation has serious consequences
for these individuals, who are not necessarily able to fully integrate into
any system. Therefore, mobile academics are misleadingly presented as
something they are not—a new European, transnational elite. The Europe
of the twenty-first century is not that of the fourteenth century. Several
centuries of nationalization of academic life lie between these two periods. While science is universal, and the university as an institution is
organizationally similar all over the world (Meyer 2010), every country
has its own kind of university. As neoliberalism has individualized academic competition to the level of individual HE institutions, a weakening of the national systems through a bifurcation into first- and
second-class institutions inside national systems themselves can be
observed. This development has the benefit of highlighting the structural
tensions and power relations that have existed for a long time within
national systems among these institutions. This development has also
shattered the uniform image of academic national life. The ‘horizontal’
networking between sometimes self-appointed ‘first-class research universities’, such as Oxford or Helsinki has put into motion a dynamic that
undermines the methodological nationalism typical of part of the
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European university system, notably in the larger countries like France,
Germany and the UK.
What is the effect of mobility and neoliberalism on academic identity?
Identity is a nebulous concept. According to the traditional view, identity
is a quality that enables us to say that two entities are similar, that they
are identical, or then it is a characteristic of an individual that sets her
apart. According to a more sociological point of view, an identity is a
(dynamic) relationship between qualities that evolve in various practices
and social interactions (see Ylijoki and Ursin 2014). Identity is like an
onion: you can peel away qualities and in the end, you have nothing. But
even here, a certain consistency is assumed. Consistency is more difficult
to achieve when habituation and adaptation are made more difficult. For
an individual academic assailed by neoliberal reforms, there are two
sources of instability that, in many ways, reinforce one another. At the
transnational level, moving from one academic culture to another without having time to appropriate and adapt leads to dislocation. Inside the
national education systems, when bureaucratically motivated reforms
follow one another in a rapid pace, the individual academic’s system 1, as
Daniel Kahnemann calls it, that is intuitive thought that is based on
experiences, has difficulty in adapting to the changing environment
(Kahnemann 2011). The combined effect of these processes—different
types of evolving working environments—creates tensions, and consequently complicates the development of epistemic communities and the
fixation of alternative beliefs (Peirce 1958, pp. 91–112), the basis of any
kind of creative intellectual work.
Conclusions
Neoliberal reforms have been very successful in transforming the university as an institution and academic identities. They have transformed the
Kantian ideal of the university from one of freethinking and research to
commissioned thinking and research. They have succeeded in subordinating internal goals to external ones, breaking relatively stable cognitive
and institutional structures. This has had an impact on the skills and
requirements required of academics. It has broken the homogeneity of
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national HE systems, creating a split between first-class and second-class
institutions. For a variety of reasons, in some national contexts like in
France, there has been some resistance among some academics, but even
there the conformity that these policies rely on has been the rule more
than the exception. How is this possible? Why have these policies done so
well? Partly because academics are divided, and no coherent, proactive
alternative exists. Academics are paid to teach and do research not politics. Another reason is that among the political class, there is no real support for resistance to the reforms. The new laws of the French Socialist
government prove that rightist and leftist governments follow the same
HE and research policy. But an additional answer might be in the ambivalence of the narrative used to promote and legitimize reform.
The neoliberal reforms teach us one thing: the ambivalence of concepts
and their strategic usage to promote symbolic and material interests in
the name of something they are not. Reforms are made in the name of
autonomy and excellence. But it seems more autonomy has destroyed
autonomy and that more excellence has destroyed excellence. This contradiction is not due to the point that any single-minded pursuit of values
necessarily leads to its contrary as Zizek argues (2001). It is rather that
politically and economically powerful interests such as national governments, transnational organizations (European Commission, OECD…)
and university administrators have succeeded in changing the habitual
meaning of concepts such as autonomy or excellence. They have succeeded in redefining them in such a way that using them in fact leads to
the promotion of values that are contrary to the old values that academics
have traditionally associated with them. To be more precise, although the
same concept (autonomy, excellence) is used, what it means, the form of
the content to use Hjelmslev’s term (1961), has changed. Since the 1980s
the triumph of neoliberalism has in fact emptied familiar forms (autonomy, excellence) of their old contents (quality, novelty) and replaced
these with new contents (ranking, Impact factor) while simultaneously
giving the impression that the old content has not changed. This swapping enables the promotion of policies that are in contradiction with the
values they supposedly promote.
The lack of awareness of language corruption has certainly contributed
to the success of neoliberalism, as it has enabled reformers to freely play
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on the mismatch between form and content. But this linguistic strategy
has not taken place in a social vacuum. The massive character of the
transformations under way and the contradictory nature of the vocabulary used to steer and legitimize these might explain why the linguistic
dimension has not been singled out. The smoke and mirrors of language
corruption has gone hand in hand with the introduction of a range of
contradictory social practices that range from those touching individuals
(identity requirements, pressures of professionalism) to those involving
large-scale organizations such as universities (increasing performance
with shrinking resources).
What are the alternatives? If going back is not a realistic option, linguistic counter-strategies might involve using quotation marks when
using key concepts such as excellence, thereby indicating the distance
between old and new content, or inventing new concepts to construct an
alternative reality. However, purely linguistic strategies are effective only
if linked with transformations in social practices, in what academics do in
their everyday activities. A lot of coordinated political work will be
needed to forge in a convincing narrative language and practice. This will
require a more politically organized academe. World-renowned academics as legitimate interlocutors with university administrators and politicians are needed to take the lead.
Note
1. Founded in 1989, EUCOR or the University of the Upper Rhine is a
tricampus organization involving five French, German and Swiss universities cooperating in the fields of training, research, administration, culture
and sport.
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Knowledge
There is no such thing as an objective indicator. (AUBR 2010, p. 12)
With globalization, the world has become more complex, creating in all
sectors of society a social demand for symbolic tools that enable the governance of this complexity. This social demand is particularly strong
among professionals involved in the governance of higher education, university administrators and civil servants in national and regional ministries, politicians and decision makers but also those individuals whose
professional life depends on higher education, notably faculty and students. Since the 1990s, the European Commission and national civil servants in Europe have been spending considerable energy in attempts to
reform the European university system, to make it more competitive vis-­
à-­vis certain American universities. Rankings of performance and efficiency as quantitative tools of public policy have played a key role in this
process (Hazelkorn 2007, 2011; Kauppi and Erkkilä 2011). The much-­
publicized league tables of the best universities in the world have been
accompanied by a host of techniques of higher education transnational
© The Author(s) 2018
N. Kauppi, Toward a Reflexive Political Sociology of the European Union,
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71002-0_9
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governance that produce, despite the considerable criticism, equivalences
between certain quantitative indicators and academic excellence (for an
overview see, for instance, Reinalda and Kulesza 2006).
The argument of this chapter is that rankings and their social carriers
participate in the relatively successful practical realization of the academic
standards they seek to codify, of the shaping of reality according to the
criteria they promote. In this sense, they are becoming a self-fulfilling
prophecy, a prediction that becomes true through feedback of varying
intensity (cf. Merton 1968). They have succeeded in establishing through
quantitative objectification certain types of equivalences. The reasons for
their success are their performative efficiency (‘scientific’, quantitative)
and the practical necessities of bureaucratic and political control of scientific outputs (for a critique of this interest, see Flexner 1939). The first
ones to feel the heat are the institutions, departments and journals in
Continental Europe and the Nordic countries that are not among the
highest ranked in the world but come right after them. They live in the
hope of becoming the highest ranked.
I will first discuss rankings as elements of a broader symbolic order and
then proceed to a brief analysis of journal rankings in Europe as elements
in the stratification of knowledge in political science.
University Ranking as Symbolic Machine-Tool
The rapid development of higher education that we have witnessed since
the launch of the Shanghai list of the best universities in the world in
2003 has taken place on the background of historically anterior fields of
action composed of actors specialized in the management of higher education and of practical knowledge of this professional activity. The relatively heterogeneous preexisting social spaces present, from a macro
perspective, a prehistory of the current global space of higher education
and, from a micro perspective, certain types of practical sense and know-­
how that continue to have effects on the activities and practices of the
actors engaged in higher education, including new professional groups
such as university managers and evaluators of research and teaching performance. Anchored in the minds of professionals of higher education as
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well as in more objectified forms such as institutional conventions and
practices, this knowledge and know-how have an impact on actions.
While professional know-how and its objectifications create a sense of
neutrality, they also necessarily reproduce certain structures of domination (a point minimized by the world culture approach, see Schofer and
Meyer 2004).
In contrast to this practical sense and the relatively vague and ‘soft’
classifications that go with it, ‘scientific’ university rankings present an
altogether different symbolic economy. They trigger evaluations and prescriptions that have varying social force. To paraphrase Marx, they are
machine tools composed of a variety of ‘scientific’ instruments, propelled
by a limitless source of social energy and competition, designed to attack
the object aimed (higher education) and transform it (cf. Marx 1985,
pp. 274, 418, note 10). University rankings have become part of a more
general global public policy script that is based on explicit and variable
numerical objectifications that shape higher education. By symbolically
unifying the until now relatively heterogeneous global landscape, they
dramatically reduce the highly complex global higher education landscape to an ordinal order ranging from the best (No. 1) to the worst
(No. n). With the assistance of a host of techniques such as monitoring
and benchmarking, the instruments reproduce the practical sense that is
anchored at the national (and regional) levels, of which they are symbolic
extensions. Through positive feedback of various effect (limiting and
solidifying certain types of equivalences) and institutionalization processes that embed rankings into bureaucratic and political routines, some
of these global ordinal orders such as the Shanghai list are becoming more
legitimate and universal as they succeed in accumulating recognition.
From objectifications of quality, they have become certifications of quality, indicative signs of attributes that exist in reality. As a result, each
higher education institution (HEI) has been assigned a ranking position
vis-à-vis other HEIs that are now direct competitors and which reflects
the quality of the institution.
Through this macro-level symbolic tour de force, the traditional order
of values and equivalences of HEIs has been inversed. Instead of fulfilling
multiple social and knowledge production functions at regional and
national levels, of contributing to the production of a qualified ­workforce,
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to the construction of a nation, to civic engagement or to an equal access
to higher education for instance, HEIs that are successful in global competition as defined by the leading league tables and their quantitative
measures will be favored.
The impact of these instruments on professionals of higher education
and university administrators has been considerable, as they seem to view
rankings as credible certifications of quality. In a survey among heads of
French HEIs, it was disclosed that 71 percent of respondents found the
ranking lists useful, 66 percent wanted to improve their institutions’
position in the rankings and a majority said that they knew how to do
that (Bourdin 2008, p. 65). In a study among HEIs in 41 countries conducted in 2006, it was revealed that 58 percent were happy with their
position, 70 percent wanted to be in the top 10 percent nationally and 71
percent in the top 25 percent internationally. About 68 percent of them
used rankings as a management tool to bring about strategic, organization, managerial or academic change (Hazelkorn 2007, p. 1).
Rankings are convincing to some academics, university administrators
and lay persons partly because they are convenient legitimizers of a familiar order (Berger and Luckmann 1966) that hammers in what everybody
more or less knows—the global leadership role of the iconic American
research university. The effects are numerous. Rankings provide a sufficient justification for imposing a strict regime of cost cutting and
increased ‘efficiency’. In the process, they legitimize the status of some
high-prestige institutions and journals as well as the networks that evolve
in their vicinity, thereby contributing to the increasing stratification of
global higher education (Marginson 2009). From this perspective, existing rankings reduce quality to cultural (forms of sociability and academic
conventions prevalent in English-speaking cultures) and social (inclusion
in high-prestige academic networks revolving around some, often private, English-language institutions) resources.
But in order to work, league tables have to partly confirm what
everyone knows. They sustain a certain academic order that in many
ways duplicates the world prior to their existence, just like the American
research university reproduces certain key elements of the Humboldtian
university. League tables partly confirm deeply held beliefs. For this
reason, many professionals and academics see ranking lists as being
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l­egitimate. There are, however, important differences between the state
of global higher education prior to 2003 and today. These are linked to
the changing context of HEIs that include an increasing amount of
numerical representations of the efficiency of HEIs, high media visibility of league tables and other rankings (exogenous recognition), the
existence of supernova institutions like New York University that have
campuses on the four continents, as well as tighter organic links
between politics and economics at the global level (knowledge economy). The same symbolic logic can be observed in another sector of
academic life, publishing.
ating Political Science Journals in Finland
R
and France
Like university rankings, journal rankings are instruments that shape the
transnational governance of higher education by codifying an existing
symbolic order and legitimizing a certain constellation of forces that
favors a fraction of all the professional journals in the world.
Following Australia, Denmark, Norway and France among other
countries, Finland launched a ranking of journals and editors in August
2010. The databases that are used to create the Finnish ranking of journals in political science, administrative studies and law include the master
journal list of Thomson Reuters’s Web of Science, the title list of Elsevier’s
Scopus, the journal ranking lists produced in Norway, Denmark and
Australia, and European Science Foundation’s (ESF) European Reference
Index for the Humanities (ERIH). The list of journals and the publisher’s
list of 2000 titles are essentially duplications of the Norwegian ratings. A
political scientist is chair of panel number 19 that ranks journals in political science, administrative studies and law. But the other eight members
seem to be from other disciplines like administrative studies and law.
The Finnish Publication Forum Project (FPFP) aims at classifying scientific publications in terms of their quality in all research fields. A very
official initiative of Universities Finland, an association of Finnish universities, the FPFP is funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture and
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based at the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies. The aims of the
FPFP are the following:
The level of a scientific journal, series or book publisher is a very rough
indicator of quality, and therefore the classification is best suited for macro-­
level analyses of the publication production at the level of countries, entire
research organizations (such as universities or State research institutes) or
research areas. The purpose of the Publication Forum classification is to
serve as the quality indicator of the whole scientific publication production
of universities within the MinEdu [Ministry of Education, added by
author] funding model as of 2015. […] The classification must not be used
mechanically in research evaluation and steering, and it is an intrinsic part
of the researchers’ freedom to choose the publication channels that they
find most appropriate for their own work. […] Publication Forum classification is not suited for evaluation of individual researchers […] The quality
levels applied in the Publication Forum predict the average quality and
impact of large publication volumes, but they are too arbitrary a tool for
the evaluation of individual publications or researchers. The classification
indicates the level of the competition and peer evaluation the publication
has gone through, but level 1 publication channels include individual publications with above the average quality and impact while levels 2 and 3
channels also include below the average, uncited publications. Under no
circumstance can the classification substitute the peer evaluation based on
the contents of the publication in the evaluations of individual researcher
or research groups. (FPFP 2012)
The publication project tries to solve the (classical) contradiction,
already pointed out by Kant (1788/1988), between a desire to govern
scientific production through authority and the freedom of researchers to
think what they wish. Due to a constitutive contradiction, the FPFP has
potentially devastating unintended consequences. On the one hand, it
permits the evaluation of the quality of ‘large publication volumes’, but,
on the other hand, researchers are given the liberty to choose the appropriate publication channels for their work. Meanwhile, it feeds into a
trend that increasingly uses numerical technologies in the hiring and promotion of faculty and more generally in the allocation of funds for scientific research and teaching. It has already become possible to ‘evaluate’
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candidates for professorships on the basis of impact factors (Garfield
1955) and citation indexes without reading the publications submitted
by the candidates. This is a logical development as it is, in fine, individual
researchers who are going to be evaluated and whose careers are going to
be affected, even if the publication project talks euphemistically only
about ‘large publication volumes’. By promoting performance measures,
the FPFP reinforces the shift in the meaning of evaluation from a qualitative definition to a quantitative one and from evaluation produced
endogenously (in this case in Finnish HEIs) to one produced exogenously
in outsourced journals, series and publishing houses in the English-­
speaking world. Quantitative performance measures are bound to be
used more than before, making qualitative evaluation archaic, even suspicious because of not being ‘scientific’ enough. All this indicates that the
relationship between quality and quantity has changed. It used to be so
that more quantity did not mean more quality: the two were conceptually separated from one another. Today, a conversion mechanism has
been forged between the two. Through a process of social alchemy, quantity can now produce quality. In the case of academic journals, quality is
first defined as being equivalent to a number, for instance, an impact
factor, then the higher the impact factor, the more there is quality (and
excellence). Quality becomes an emergent property of quantity.
The negative effects of journal ranking have been such that Australia, a
pioneer in journal rankings, has given it up in 2011 because of the undesirable behavior they generated, specifically their use to evaluate individual researchers. According to the Innovation, Industry, Science and
Research Minister Kim Carr:
There is clear and consistent evidence that the rankings were being deployed
inappropriately within some quarters of the sector, in ways that could produce harmful outcomes, and based on a poor understanding of the actual
role of the rankings. […] One common example was the setting of targets
for publication in A and A* journals by institutional research managers.
(Quoted in Rowbotham 2011)
In the FPFP, 1231 journals in political science, administrative studies
and law have been evaluated into two categories: level 1 journals are
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domestic and foreign scientific publication channels and level 2 journals
are ‘the leading scientific publication channels’ (FPFP 2011). Out of the
1231 journals, 106 or 8.6 percent are considered as being of higher quality or level 2 journals. The level 2 journals cover ‘the leading scientific
publication channels, in which the researchers from different countries
publish their best research’ (FPFP 2011). Of these level 2 journals, a mere
four or 3.8 percent are published in languages other than English. In
political science, domestic journals are level 1 journals, that is, less valuable publication places. Scholars will no doubt be ‘encouraged’ to publish
their articles whose research objects have a mostly regional or national
interest in level 1 journals. No doubt it will be more difficult to get these
published in level 2 journals.
A new list of 57 level 3 or highest level ‘superjournals’ was published,
beginning October 2011, on the website of the project. Following a
pyramid-­shaped form, the tip of the construction (level 3 journals) is
composed of 100 percent English-language publications, and many of
them are generalist political science and international relations (IR) journals, such as West European Politics, International Organization and
Journal of Common Market Studies, testifying to a seemingly paradoxical
tendency toward ‘despecialization’.
What this ranking does is it delegitimizes non-English-language journals compared with English-language journals, and within English-­
language publications to a lesser extent specialized journals against more
generalist ones. In sociological parlance, it codifies certain resource conversion rates, giving native or near-native English speakers inserted in
high-prestige networks a possibility to convert linguistic resources into
academic resources and to accumulate academic resources more efficiently than those located in less prestigious institutions and networks. In
each subdisciplinary specialty area, there is one level 2 journal, the rest are
level 1 journals. For instance, the journal Millennium, published by graduate students at the London School of Economics and Political Science
and known for introducing new theories and perspectives to IR research
is logically ranked as a level 1 journal whereas the dominant European
Journal of International Relations is a level 2 journal. If we follow this
logic, some journals, such as the one mentioned, and specialty areas like
French politics that has its own French- and English-language reviews
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that are systematically ranked as level 1 journals will gradually disappear
from the radar of students, scholars and evaluators. They are too specialized and will lose the race to high-impact-factor generalist journals that
deal with a wide range of topics. Various regularities provide varying positive feedback, creating expectations that bring about what is being
expected. The effects of these rankings are already visible in some
European countries like the Netherlands where scholars are strongly
encouraged to publish in level 2 and level 3 journals. But there is more.
In Finland, starting from 2015, 13 percent of university public funding
will directly depend on publications as defined by the FPFP. These developments confirm that journal rankings provide powerful instruments of
steering academic research and teaching.
The policy of the French Evaluation Agency for Research and Higher
Education (AERES) has been different and provides a model for alternative ranking. Instead of a classification into two categories with domestic
publications falling into the lower category, AERES has opted for a tripartite classification into A, B and C categories. The A category includes
first-class, generalist and specialist reviews, B category has important generalist and specialist reviews and C has nonscientific or second-class
reviews. AERES wanted to avoid the criteria of international visibility
used by the Finns and the ESF among others because in their mind it
would not enable a reasonable evaluation of the scientific quality of
French scholars. Consequently, every year domestic journals are classified
in categories A (that does not exceed 25 percent of the total) and B,
including both generalist and specialized journals. Thus, French-language
articles published in French-language political science journals can be
high-quality products. How can this be explained?
One explanation might be that the relatively large and closed French
academic market has its own system of symbolic and material rewards,
and this makes possible sustained resistance vis-à-vis global scripts that
are generated in the English-language sphere of influence. With a large
number of journals and publishers, the French-language academic market is large enough to provide a financially viable alternative to the
English-language academic market. For scholars, compared to many
other academic markets, permanent university positions still exist, making it relatively uninteresting to engage in transnational professional
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careers. For many outside of France, long-standing historical traditions
and the prestige of French social science and iconic authors such as Michel
Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu also make out of French-language academic
research a credible alternative to English-language dominance. This interest outside of France also reinforces the sense of value and distinctiveness.
A second explanation might be that the division between so-called hard
sciences and the social sciences and humanities is clearer in France than
elsewhere. Transferring modes of evaluation from the ‘hard’ sciences to
the ‘softer’ sciences will not work because of the resistance it generates in
academe among the representatives of the ‘soft’ sciences. The tradition of
independence of research and the idea of the scholar as an intellectual
relatively removed from official politics also reinforce the sentiment that
scholars in the ‘soft’ sciences have a right to resist reforms that are imposed
on them from the outside, and especially when they are presented as originating from ‘Anglo-Saxon’ countries, the historical enemies.
Some Effects of Journal Ranking
[I]t is thought to be unlikely that academics will move to a lower-ranked
institution than their current one unless there is a pocket of excellence or
other overriding reason. (HEFCE 2008, p. 7)
Actors are human beings who will react to classifications if they are
considered legitimate. Presenting a certain symbolic order, legitimizing
certain institutions and journals and stigmatizing others will lead to
behavioral changes. Journal rankings create a symbolic order where there
is a fictitious 100 percent correlation between the quality of the individual scholar, her article and the sites where she publishes. In this symbolic
logic, an article in a level 3 journal is better than an article in a level 1
journal, and an individual publishing in a level 3 journal is logically a
better scholar than one publishing in a level 1 journal. Publishing a level
3 article in a level 1 journal is thus a logical anomaly. Likewise, a top
scholar cannot possibly work in a low-quality institution. However, in
the real world all articles in level 3 journals are not of level 3 quality, and
inversely all articles in level 1 articles are not level 1 articles in terms of
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quality. The ‘solution’ to the contradiction between theory and practice
seems to be to force this symbolic logic on the academic community.
Despite empirical dissonance, rankings as performative tools select and
solidify through usage equivalences between selected indicators and academic excellence, transforming these equivalences from mere empirical
possibilities into desirable realities, thus structuring future actions. The
finality of this symbolic logic is that the best scholars from the best
departments/universities will publish the best articles in the best journals.
In the process, this symbolic logic institutionalizes existing high-prestige
institutions and networks in academe, centering on a few top English-­
language universities. While these processes enforce a global order, they
also provide as a prediction (a future that is already present) to the scholarly community and its financers a sense of inevitability, continuity and
control, reinforcing certain habits of thinking and lines of action. It does
not require a leap of faith to imagine that a scholar in a highly ranked
institution, inserted in circles controlling level 3 journals, will be able to
accumulate more efficiently various resources (academic recognition,
financial means and so on) in academic power struggles and, thus, influence the social definition of legitimate research perspectives, objects and
methods than a scholar inserted in less prestigious circles. While for
scholars in institutions considered as being high-prestige institutions like
Oxford University or Cambridge University, it is perfectly normal to
publish in the in-house publishing firms, Oxford University Press (OUP)
or Cambridge University Press (CUP); for the majority of scholars from
less highly ranked institutions, it would be a great opportunity to publish
with OUP or CUP.
Performance rankings participate in a process of contagion and spreading of a circular logic of ‘scientific’ classification and ordering (or rationalization to use Weber’s term) that transform the value of universities
and HEIs through numerical measurement. They reinforce the value of
market leaders known to everyone, and they create a ranking position for
the others. Synchronized with the mobilization of a host of other instruments such as qualitative quality labels (such as European research university), these processes have a powerful uniformizing effect: institutions
will emulate leading models, and scholars will try to insert themselves in
the circles controlling leading journals as defined by journal rankings and
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to duplicate their scientific preferences. The terms of legitimate scholarly
debate will be delimited by the ‘horizon of truth’ of the social groups
evolving around top institutions and journals. These equivalences institutionalized, it might be quasi-impossible for alternative, marginal voices to
develop and be rewarded in academe. Furthermore, these rankings might
be used more systematically in deciding about hiring and promotion,
endangering the status of traditional substantive or qualitative evaluation
or expert opinion, which is being substituted by formal or quantitative
evaluation.
These transnational symbolic instruments also have a powerful rescaling effect on the activities of individual scholars, universities and
HEIs: the reference points are now global and not national or regional.
Instruments and best practices circulate in global professional communities as universal and formal measures of value. As they elaborate
previously existing value hierarchies, they participate in the construction
of a quasinatural world inhabited by beings such as Harvard and
Cambridge with relatively constant properties or essences (excellence).
Consequently, the world models are presented as being stable, coherent
and inevitable, thus by definition legitimate. But this quasinatural order
is also a Zaubergarten to use Weber’s term where these same beings have
powers that are exceptional or ‘out of this world’. In other words, rationalization processes as ‘demagification’ or disenchantment processes are
not linear (more rationality, less magic) as Weber assumed. Paradoxically,
they also create new forms of magical relationships (numerical technologies) that would once and for all (a déjà vu) solve the contradiction
between theory (rankings) and (messy) reality. The solution to the contradiction is to forget reality and concentrate on theory.
In terms of the effects of the rankings, as the Australian example demonstrates, the main danger is the mechanical use of these tools to evaluate
individuals and rationalize academic activities. As these equivalences
between indicators and quality become institutionalized, they can easily
be used to impose new cost-cutting measures and to delegitimize resistance to these measures. Their practical utility derives from their concordance with certain deeply held beliefs, the magic of numbers (which
creates a sentiment of control), their performative power and the financial constraints imposed on the practices of evaluation.
European Political Science and Global Knowledge
161
Evaluation of quality is of course a major challenge for the social sciences. But to be academically credible, evaluations should be conceived
in terms elaborated by a representative group of academics, which is not
usually the case. Credibility would also require the allocation of sufficient
time for evaluators to thoroughly acquaint themselves with the texts and
candidates they have to evaluate and the organization of a large enough
pool of experts to cover all the subdisciplines of the social sciences. In
order to break the circular logic of self-fulfilling prophecy, we need to
separate quantitative ranking and qualitative evaluation from each other.
The problem is that competent qualitative evaluation requires time and a
kind of slow science (compare the slow food movement!) that has become
a luxury because it is considered too expensive. For this reason, many
professionals accept the equivalences between the value of universities or
journals or scholars and ranking positions. They are too busy and do not
have the time to always do an in-depth job when evaluating quality. From
this perspective, equivalences between indicators and quality are legitimate to the extent that they reinforce preconceived ideas about quality
that correlate with certain social qualities and provide ease from the
tempo of academic work. Without these justifications, cutting costs and
imposing strict ‘rationalization’ measures would not be practically
possible.
Conclusions
Ranking as a technique of equivalence that produces social facts exemplifies a form of structural power that imposes certain measurable indicators as approximations of quality through the production of a
quasinatural order that is predictable and presented as legitimate. Through
its social carriers—academics, evaluators, administrators, politicians and
journalists—ranking enhances the reality it describes and delegitimizes
qualitative evaluation. By fabricating a unified global numerical order
that partly reproduces established academic hierarchies, university rankings legitimize certain institutions as top institutions and a certain ideal of
excellence. For their part, political science journal rankings in Finland, and
to a lesser degree in France, legitimize English-language generalist ­publications
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and mainstream scholarly approaches in European political science. They
both normalize the dominance in academe of certain types of cultural
and social resources. According to the value judgment of the Finnish
political science journal ranking, a Finnish-language text published in a
Finnish journal is by definition a second-class product, and the academic
competence required to produce it is also second class. This and other
rankings participate in the creation of a parallel world that is, in many
ways but not totally, disconnected from reality, but which is being
imposed on the academic community as a whole by a part of the academic community, backed by specialists in higher education governance
living off academic business and politicians, eager to cut public expenditures. The (temporary) winners in this ongoing classification struggle are
the dominant English-language outlets and networks as well as university
administrators and decision makers, ‘authority’ in Immanuel Kant’s
words (Kant 1788/1988), while the losers include academics defending
(traditional) qualitative evaluation and academic freedom.
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Education in the Twentieth Century. http://cddrl.stanford.edu/publications/
20801/. Accessed 29 Jan 2013.
10
Academics as Politicians and as Operators
of Global Governance
The future of the world depends on the knowledge we have of it. Keynes
famously added that the world is ruled by the ideas of economists and
political philosophers—and little else (Keynes 1936). While nobody
would dispute the power of ideas, Keynes forgot to add that ideas are
always somebody else’s. Social groups seek to monopolize the ideas they
consider valuable and to discredit those that are a threat. Therefore, symbolic struggles over legitimate principles of domination are not only ideational as constructivists and discursive institutionalists argue. Unless
fused with material interests, ideas or ideal interests are powerless (Weber
in Gerth and Mills 1991, p. 280). They require the sustained mobilization of a variety of powerful carriers of convergent material and ideal
interests, social groups like politicians, experts, political activists and
journalists. From this perspective, global governance boils down to a constant, most of the time upstream, ‘under the radar’ and politically diffused warfare over the knowledge and interests that steer it. In this
chapter, I will reflect upon politics and academe in global governance,
followed by an analysis of two cases: those of Barroso and Foucault that
exemplify two ways of political engagement.
© The Author(s) 2018
N. Kauppi, Toward a Reflexive Political Sociology of the European Union,
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71002-0_10
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Social scientists play a key but concealed part in the steering of global
governance in a variety of social roles and fields of action. They partake in
the development of influential transnational professional groups that
operate under and beyond global institutions (Kauppi and Madsen
2013). By producing practical knowledge for everyday or ‘banal’ global
governance, social scientists shape the politically imaginable at more
institutional levels. Social scientists are recruited into global institutions
such as the World Bank as decision makers, administrators or experts.
They create politically and economically exploitable knowledge like legal
regulations, financial products like derivatives and indicators of democratization or new global institutions like Transparency International. Yet
others provide at a higher level of abstraction more theoretically interested, reflexive knowledge on global governance that can lead to new
cycles of politicization and redefinitions of the coordinates of global governance (Beck et al. 1994; World Social Science Report 2013; Zürn
2013). In all these capacities, social scientists act as the physical (personnel) and symbolic (practical knowledge) operators of global governance.
The social sciences provide the main training ground for global elites.
More than before, a high level of education is one of the main conditions
of access to elite positions in all societies. Educational capital is considered as being a universal resource that rhymes with legitimacy, as something that is not tied to particular interests (see also Sending 2009).
Educational elites also take part in the horizontal and vertical circulation
of decision-making elites. For instance, in the European Commission
(2009–14) 46.4 percent of the Commissioners are former university professors or researchers in the social sciences (international relations, political science, economics and law). The president of the Commission
epitomized this interdependency: José Manuel Barroso was a former professor of international relations at the University of Lusiada and former
Prime Minister of Portugal. The proportion of scholars is even higher in
the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, where 50 percent of
the members are former professors or researchers in economics and in the
Court of Justice of the European Union, where 75 percent of its members
are former professors of law.
Social scientists do not only conceive the well-known input and output legitimation for global governance in the form of a universal and
Academics as Politicians and as Operators of Global Governance
167
‘objective’ knowledge that justifies its existence and deepening (Meyer
2010). In the limits of power constellations, they actively shape it in various social roles. Academic elites form the expert personnel of various
global institutions. For instance, the EU’s program Horizon 2020 has
become the key instrument in the governance of European science and
society, and academics from all disciplines are strongly encouraged to
participate in its programs. Given the modest size of the EU administration and its expansive strategy, there is a constant demand for outside
personnel ready to shape and produce economically and politically
exploitable knowledge. In the Horizon 2020 program, the Framework
program for research and innovation, experts in all areas participate on an
occasional basis in the evaluation of activities and monitoring of
Commission actions in the 14 Horizon 2020 Advisory Groups that range
from issues such as ‘Future and Emerging Technologies (FET)’ to ‘Smart,
green and integrated transport’. The recruitment criteria into the Advisory
Groups are twofold: a high level of expertise in the relevant fields of
research and innovation and availability for occasional, short-term assignments. The mission of the experts is to implement or evaluate programs
and design policies. Not surprisingly social scientists are encouraged to
convert their academic capital into politically exploitable resources by
producing policy-relevant, evidence-based facts that rhyme with dominant interests. This is very clear in the governance of science.
Academics participate in the production of higher education (HE) and
research governance tools that play an increasing role in the institutional
design of science governance. A shining example of this is the European
Commission’s ranking of universities U-multirank –project. Launched in
2009, the U-multirank challenges dominant but flawed rankings of academic excellence such as the Shanghai and the Times Higher Education
(THES) rankings. These systematically place a number of American universities such as Harvard or Stanford in the top ten. Certain politicians in
EU member-states and administrators in the European Commission felt
that a European ranking was the only way the strengths of European
universities could be taken into account. For instance, the Shanghai ranking does not factor in the significant research output of public research
institutions such as the Max Planck Society in Germany or the Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique in France that are not part of
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­ niversities. Following a similar logic, the Russian government is prou
ceeding with its own ranking of Russian and global HE institutions,
intensifying the multidimensional competition over the definition of
knowledge needs in global governance.
Social scientists play an active but concealed part in global governance,
in a variety of social roles that go beyond the stereotypical a posteriori
scientific legitimation of dominant interests. They do this both as decision makers or administrators when they have converted themselves into
political and administrative careers, and as scholars and members of epistemic communities if they stay in the world of academe. Economists,
lawyers, sociologists and political scientists also fabricate reflexive
accounts of the disputed structures of global governance, providing
ammunition for alternative scenarios that challenge dominant classifications and existing knowledge needs. In this sense, the steering of global
governance is fundamentally an academic and political coproduction.
Viewing knowledge as an active force highlights the social scientists’
role and political responsibility as key shapers of global governance.
While there is abundant research on social scientists as experts (see for
instance, Eriksson 1999, also Morin 2014), more research is urgently
needed on the dynamics between the various roles social scientists occupy
and the uses they make of their knowledge.
What are the links between political engagement, scholarship and
social trajectories? Politics can be seen in two ways: as a general aspect of
human existence, or as an activity that is restricted to the political field or
arena, involving a set of professionalized actors and institutions. In the
first sense, everything academics do is political and all academics are politicians (for a defense of this position, see Palonen 2017). The political is
seen as an aspect of social action, and anything can be interpreted as
being political. Weber used for this aspect the concept of Macht, which
has sometimes been translated as power. As power is the equivalent to
gravity in the social world, and as politics has to do with power, everything is political. For the Weberologist Kari Palonen, politicization
involves turning the taken for granted into an object of negotiation and
contestation. From this perspective, academics need to be good politicians to be successful academics. They need to promote themselves and
their students, accumulate financial resources, collaborate with useful
Academics as Politicians and as Operators of Global Governance
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colleagues and so on. In a way, these are all ‘political’ activities as they
involve the use of collective resources to one’s own benefit. They all
require negotiating, ‘wheeling and dealing’. We then get into an analysis
of the rules of academic politics.
In the second sense of the term, politics as a specialized area of activity,
a perspective that has developed in research in political science, academics
can be politicians in two ways. In his famous text, ‘Politics as a vocation’,
Weber states that academics either abandon for some time their academic
activities to devote themselves full time to politics, becoming professional
politicians, engaging in politics as a primary activity; or then they are
occasional politicians who continue teaching and doing research while,
on the side, doing politics, politics being for them a secondary activity.
This second type can involve unpaid activism in civil society organizations for instance. The first type corresponds to Weber’s famous living of
politics and the second to living for politics. In both cases, the individual
engaging in these activities will need a source of economic income.
For Weber, the main differentiating criteria between the two modalities of political activity is the source of revenue, the economic precondition of any political activity. In the first case, revenue comes from political
activity itself, in the second case from other sources. The cases discussed
here involve academics who are able to keep their academic position or at
least to return to an academic position after investing into political activity: for academics, this mobility is a precondition for any kind of sustained political action. For many, a tenured position in academe makes
this possible. However, if the traffic is weak because of the relative closure
of the two fields because of an advanced level of professionalization for
instance, then alternation will not work. Another option would then to
be independently wealthy, to have access to significant income through
family relations for instance, or to have another lucrative occupation.
Max Weber frequently underlined that politics should be kept out of
the classroom (see for discussion, Aron 1959, pp. 7–8), and that the virtues of politics were incompatible with those of science. I find it more
interesting to reflect on how these two ideal-typical spheres of activity,
academe and politics, communicate with one another, or to use other
words, the interfield dynamics between academe and politics, and what
kinds of dependencies and contradictions they produce.
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My empirical examples will come from the social sciences and politics
today in Europe. I will first discuss the links between the academic and
(democratic) political fields, and then through a few examples explore
some of the challenges academics face when they engage politically. The
involvement of academics in politics has to be differentiated in terms of
the level of engagement, if political activity is a primary or secondary
activity. I will be talking about an ideal-typical democratic political field,
which presupposes the existence of real elections, debate, a free press and
so on. I want to point out that many sociological theories, such as
Bourdieu’s, view these as being a scam. In this view, politics is reduced to
social domination and to a manipulation of personal interest into public
good. In this view, the struggle for power, for instance in the case of the
development of social policies for the poor, does not have any positive
social effects: it merely reinforces the tooth-and-nail struggle. This draws
a too simplistic picture of modern societies. I do not share this perspective because it equates for instance the current French political field to the
Soviet political field of the 1980s. This I think is a mistake as it lumps
together two entities that are qualitatively different. While there is a lot
of scamming going on in French politics, it is misleading to equate this
with the politics of a totalitarian state.
Science and politics are spheres of social action. What do they have in
common? Politics and academe share an epistemology, or a regulative
idea to use Kant’s term, that is rarely discussed: for both truth is by definition contestable, and the only way to find it is through debate pro and
contra. The greatest danger for both is a refusal of dialogue or debate. In
politics, extremists such as free market fundamentalists think they know
how to organize society and view their opponents, or people who do not
agree with them, as their enemies. In academe, fundamentalists believe
their perspective is the right one; the others are wrong and should not be
listened to as there is nothing to learn from them (Ignatieff 2015; Waltzer
2015). This prevents scholarly development.
However, while they share an epistemology, the academic field and the
political field clearly obey different logics. The different logics do not
have to do so much with the aim of the actions in terms of epistemology
and morality that is the accumulation of the specific resources valued in
Academics as Politicians and as Operators of Global Governance
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the arena in question, as with what kinds of activities these consist of, and
how these activities are institutionally organized. Academic competition
aims at recognition in the academic field, following the historically set
rules of the game. The same goes for democratic politics, where elections
enable to accumulate legislative political resources for instance, and then
convert these into prized executive political resources such as ministerial
positions. In academe, what is required is publishing articles, books or
both, teaching, doing administrative work like sitting in committees,
mentoring PhD students, getting involved with activities that promote
the university in society or the equivalent, accumulating recognition
from peers and so on. In most contexts, political activity is seen as being
something incompatible to scholarly work and being an occasional politician is a stigma. In some, like in France, endogenous academic activities
can be supplemented with exogenous ones, like visibility in the media
through interviews and public interventions for instance, without damaging academic career development.
F rom Academe to Politics and Back:
Some Examples
Former president of the European Commission and professor of international relations José Manuel Barroso is a good example of successive careers
in academe and politics. He embarked on an academic career, working as
a teaching assistant at the Law Faculty of the University of Lisbon, in the
Department of Political Science, University of Geneva, Switzerland, and
as a visiting professor at the Department of Government and School of
Foreign Affairs, Georgetown University in Washington DC. In 1979, at
age 23, he founded, according to his official CV on the website of the
European Commission, the University Association for European Studies.
I have not been able to trace this organization. In 1995, he became head
of the international relations department of a private Portuguese university, Lusiada University, Lisbon, that was created in 1986. In 2015, returning to academe, he was visiting professor at the Global Studies Institute of
the University of Geneva and at Princeton University.
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Barroso’s political career started simultaneously as his academic career
in 1980, when he joined the Social Democratic Party. Before that, he had
been a member of a Maoist students’ association. In 1999, he became
president of the party, reelected three times to this position. Before that,
he had been six times elected to the national parliament, state secretary
for foreign affairs and cooperation, as well as minister for foreign affairs.
In 2002, following the PSD victory in the general election, he was
appointed prime minister of Portugal. In 2004, he was appointed to the
post of president of the European Commission, a technocratic organization if ever there was any, a post he held for the two, maximum terms,
until 2014.
Barroso’s occupation, university teacher in a private institution of
higher education, was particularly suitable for starting a political career.
He was also able to come back to academe once his, by definition fixed-­
term, political appointments ended. The reason is that his political activities have considerable academic interest and enabled him to connect
politics and academe with each other. In Weber’s sense, he lived off politics, getting paid to do politics, accumulating political resources and
climbing the political ladder, from a Socialist activist to prime minister of
Portugal and then president of the European Commission.
Success of Barroso’s kind requires investing into politics as a primary
activity and getting rewarded financially and symbolically for that activity. Indeed, from the point of view of a politician, perhaps the key issue
is continuity, that is finding another position once the one occupied ends,
as there are no permanent positions in politics contrary to tenured positions in academe. While being quite neglected in the literature, this question might have a significant impact on what kinds of policy outputs are
produced. If the outputs are such that they will prevent a politician from
finding another position, that is jeopardize their career by association
with bad decisions that distance the politician from her constituencies for
instance, then it will be very difficult for that politician to implement
that policy. President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker
commented the following on the reforms needed to overcome the
­economic crisis in Europe (Juncker 2014): ‘We all know what to do, we
just don’t know how to get re-elected after we’ve done it’. That is, it is
politically too risky for politicians’ careers to follow the right policies; for
Academics as Politicians and as Operators of Global Governance
173
that reason, they are not implemented. If the politician does not have a
financial safety net, the economic revenue the politician will be able to
improvise at the moment misfortune descends on her or the term expires
will condition career development. The British daily The Telegraph wrote
that Juncker’s statement was one of his most outrageous quotations. To
anyone involved in politics, he just said what is plain common sense.
Occasional Politicians
Occasional politicians are those who live for politics, engage in political
action without investing primarily into politics, without living off politics. The modalities of engagement vary depending on national and disciplinary cultures. Examples of academics who get engaged into some
kind of political actions include individuals operating in France, where
extra-academic activities are nearly a must for any self-respecting critical
academic. These activities include signing petitions, taking part in demonstrations, taking part in meeting at think tanks like the Foundation
Saint-Simon. Leading French academics like Pierre Bourdieu, Michel
Foucault and Jacques Derrida backed demonstrators and participated in
the activities of various civil society associations. They were not involved
in politics to gain a prominent political position. They used political visibility and credibility to promote certain issues of public interest or rather
issues that fulfill the criteria of the dominant French cultural model of
the critical intellectual. An engaged intellectual in the French tradition is
an occasional politician according to Weber’s concept.
Foucault’s political involvement increased after several extreme-leftist
movements went underground after May ’68. It was following a hunger
strike of some of the militants to obtain the status of political prisoners
that Foucault founded the Information Group on Prisons (GIP), to
allow prisoners to speak on the conditions of their incarceration. In
November 1972, he sets up the Action Committee of Prisoners (CAP).
He also participated, with Jean-Paul Sartre, in the first demonstrations in
support of immigrant workers. Later during the 1970s, he expressed his
support for Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime. For Foucault, a cultural model
of engagement legitimized his extra-academic activities, and enabled the
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c­ ombination of political action, petitions and demonstrations to be part
of his academic activities without risking his academic career.
Conclusions
In the case of politics as a primary activity, we can see a process of alternation between politics and academe and a differentiated accumulation of
political and academic resources. As these activities are seen in most contexts as being incompatible, this alternation is the only option. But they
are not totally dissociated from one another. In the case of Barroso,
European politics unites both his academic and political activities. The
substance and the issues of interest are for both types of activities,
although one theoretical and the other practical, the same. Barroso was
both a scholar of and a key actor in European politics. The same goes for
Foucault. Foucault had a scholarly and practical interest in issues of normalcy, prisons and of discipline more broadly. This substantive connection is key to understanding the links between academe and politics in
both cases of politics as a primary and a secondary activity.
But another element is also necessary, fame or public visibility. In
Foucault’s case, we observe a primary activity of accumulation of academic resources that aims at converting secondary political resources into
academic advantages, with only a minimal accumulation of these secondary political resources. The resource that enables this conversion between
political and academic fields is public visibility. In the French context,
this secondary political activity does not lead to a devaluation of academic resources, like it would in most other European nation-states,
where occasional politicians and politics as a secondary activity are not
favored but rather stigmatized. The substantive connection between the
fields and the key resource of public visibility enabled Foucault to convert
fame into academic credibility.
Instead of choosing between politics as a practical activity or political
science as an a posteriori description of this political activity, what emerges
out of this reflection is an alternative conception of interaction of the two
dimensions as political engagement, on how politics influences and
shapes academic activity and how academic activity provides, in certain
Academics as Politicians and as Operators of Global Governance
175
conditions, the knowledge necessary for acting in the world (conversion
of academic knowledge into political knowledge) and a resource like
fame that can be used and accumulated in both fields of action.
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Field. http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/culture/papers/sending09.pdf. Accessed
9 Feb 2017.
Waltzer, M. (2015). Islamism and the Left. Dissent, Winter, 107–117.
World Social Science Report. (2013). Changing Global Environments. Paris:
UNESCO/OECD.
Zürn, M. (2013). The Politicization of World Politics and its Effects: Eight
Propositions. European Political Science Review, 6(1), 47–71.
Part III
Bourdieusian Meditations
11
Translation and the Politics
of Circulating Ideas
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive
property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an
individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the
moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the
receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no
one possesses the less because every other possesses the whole of it. He who
receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine;
as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That
ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral
and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to
have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made
them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in
any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical
being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
(Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson Monticello, August 13, 1813)
The topic of this chapter is the politics of circulating ideas, as part of a
broader reflection on the circulation/diffusion/transfer/transplantation
of concepts and ideas in the EU. What are the mechanisms by which
© The Author(s) 2018
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ideas and concepts are associated to one another, how they form semantic
fields, how they come to form stabilized, institutionalized and taken-for-­
granted horizons of action, and how they are appropriated by and attributed to individuals and groups? I will understand an idea as a representation
of something in the mind and a concept as an idea that is definitionally
relative stable, materialized and institutionalized. This does not mean
that they cannot be challenged. On the contrary, definitional struggles
are usual in social life. I will start with a discussion of some main points
of a text by Pierre Bourdieu on the international circulation of ideas in
which he develops a framework for the analysis of the diffusion of culture, and then I will develop some further lines of inquiry for an alternative social science approach to these issues.
Circulation Spaces of Ideas, Texts and Contexts
In his now famous talk entitled ‘Les conditions sociales de la circulation
internationale des idées’, or the social conditions of the international circulation of ideas, at the Frankreich-Zentrum of the University of Freiburg
in 1989, Pierre Bourdieu proposes to ‘describe if … the tendencies of
these international exchanges that we describe usually in a language
which owes more to mysticism than to reason’ (Bourdieu 1989, p. I) are
valid. Since its publication, first in Cahiers d’histoire des littératures romanes
in 1990, then in English in 1999 (Shusterman 1999) and finally posthumously in 2002 in Bourdieu’s journal Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, this text has become quite influential among sociologists interested in
internationalization of knowledge and the diffusion of ideas.
Bourdieu sketched the outlines of a sociological approach to the international circulation of ideas. In this sketch Bourdieu argued, following
Marx, for an economic approach to the circulation of ideas. The context
of his reflection is French-German relations, which he sets in a wider
framework, international exchange in the area of culture. But his talk also
builds on certain deeply held beliefs about the life of ideas. What I would
like to do is discuss what I see as some key points of this text. These key
points are relative to the space where ideas circulate, to the characteristics
of ideas, and to the relationship between text and context.
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International Circulation
As the title indicates, the social conditions of the international circulation
of ideas, the first one of Bourdieu’s presuppositions is that the space in
which ideas circulate is composed of nation-states and of relationships
between these. The nation-states are the basic ontological building blocks
of this space, and they provide the main structure for circulation. In this
sense, Bourdieu bases his reflection on the tenets of realist or neorealist
international relations. This is in some way a common-sense position.
Who would deny that nation-states play a key role in all walks of life,
including culture? Consequently, France and Germany are examined as
two distinct fields of production and reception of ideas. France and
Germany are treated as two relatively homogeneous, hermetic entities.
From this setup, it follows that internationalization is understood as a
process of de-nationalization (Bourdieu 1989, p. IX). In this zero-sum
game, more of the international would mean less of the national. For
Bourdieu, the international is then a continuation of the national. Thus,
intellectuals operating in national settings project to the international
level prejudices, stereotypes, intellectual dividing lines and so on. The
international is then just a heteronomous extension of imperialisms and
other national struggles.
Ideas Are Like Material Goods
The second of Bourdieu’s presuppositions is that ideas are like merchandise; that is, they have some of the same properties that merchandise has.
He probably had in mind Marx’s analysis of the circulation of merchandise in Capital. Because of their merchandise-like characteristics, they can
be exported and imported (Bourdieu 1989, p. I).1 This assumes that the
origin of ideas can be clearly determined. For each idea, we would have a
point of origin, a locality, a production context, even an individual, an
institution such as a laboratory or university that would enable us to say
unequivocally, this is where this idea is from, and thus the original meaning of an idea stems from this point. Bourdieu seems to follow here the
diffusionist approach to innovations developed by among others Everett
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Rogers (1962).2 We can then say that some ideas are French ideas, for
instance, and part of French cultural heritage if their original context is
France. We can then engage in an evaluation of the degree of deformation
of ideas from a norm when they travel from their original context to
another context.
In Bourdieu’s framework, this normative dimension is possible because
he assumes there is an original meaning, a certain cultural value against
which translation and interpretation could be compared. Furthermore,
products of the same origin can be attributed similar properties (German
idealism, French structuralism…), creating cultural categories, hierarchies and uniformity. Bourdieu sees deformation as an anomaly, as a
deviation from the norm and not as the normal state of the transnational
circulation of ideas. For Bourdieu, circulation is equivalent to duplication or reproduction.
Texts Circulate Without Their Context
The third idea Bourdieu develops in his model for analysis of the international circulation of ideas is that texts ‘circulate without their context’.
Here he refers to Marx’s Communist Manifesto, where in Bourdieu’s reading Marx argues that German thinkers never quite understood French
thinkers because they read texts that were the products of political circumstances as ‘pure texts’, transforming the political agent that was at the
origin of the text into a transcendental subject. In other words, the circulating texts do not transport with them their field of production, and the
readers of these texts will reinterpret them in relation to their own field of
reception.3 While in some sense it is true that when writings emigrated
from France to Germany, ‘French social conditions had not immigrated
along with them’ (Marx and Engels 1969, p. 74), and Marx and Engels
were referring to specific texts, ‘French Socialist and Communist literature’ that were involved in specific political struggles.
What would a social science approach to the circulation of ideas need
to take into account? It would have to be that ideas can take different
symbolic forms and have variable power. Ideas as mental representations
and concepts as their materialization are tied to one another, but they can
Translation and the Politics of Circulating Ideas
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circulate detached from one another. The circulation of ideas in Bourdieu’s
sense has two dimensions—that of the circulation of mental representations (content) and of concepts (form). The presupposition is that ideas
are weapons that are used to shape the perceptions and representations of
the world. Individuals and groups such as nation-states, professional
groups, political groups, and so on attempt to appropriate, or better have
them be attributed to themselves by others, those ideas that they consider
valuable, and transform them into taken-for-granted concepts, thus
increasing their power as structurers of reality.
A Critique
Hierarchical Transnational Spaces
Bourdieu’s zero-sum statement simplifies internationalization. It does not
take into account the complex appropriations and integration of international trends into national settings (nationalization of the international)
and more generally the dialectics of internationalization-nationalization.
After all, as recent scholarship has demonstrated, despite many nations
declaring to have invented it, or precisely because of these various claims,
even nationalism is a transnational innovation.
The structure of circulation of ideas in terms of nation-states and relationships between these nation-states feeds into methodological nationalism (Glick-Schiller and Wimmer 2002). Bourdieu delimits culture and
symbolic production in terms of national borders. If one considers international exchanges in culture, more relevant units of analysis might be
language groups (for analysis, see de Swaan 2001) or cultural codes in
terms of epistemic communities. This would make analysis of national
settings in terms of different language groups (for instance, in multilingual Switzerland) and contacts between nations and smaller social groups
as professional groups in terms of a common language (epistemic communities) possible. This alternative formatting would give us direct indications on the size of the intellectual market, for instance, which is a key
factor today when excellence is defined in science.
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Cultural or linguistic homogeneity also has considerable impact on the
diffusion of concepts and intellectual works as language groups or epistemic communities form culturally homogeneous entities in which ideas
can be assumed to move faster than in more heterogeneous entities. There
is no overlap between the two contexts Bourdieu analyses, and he does
not mention for instance the increasing transnational traffic of scholars
and exchanges between the two, and the increasing role of heterophilous
individuals acquainted with several national languages, contexts and cultures that bridge several contexts.
The space where ideas circulate is not composed only of horizontal elements but also of vertical, hierarchical, elements. The distinction between
intellectual centers and peripheries is key to understanding cultural exchanges
in terms of power differentials, be it between the North and the South or in
single countries between dominant and dominated institutions.
Ideas Are Not Material Goods
The merchandise metaphor has its limits. Ideas are not material goods
but rather immaterial goods, although they need to take a material form
to exist. Ideas need to be distinguished from one another in terms of their
level of materialization or institutionalization. Another limit is that the
more one utilizes a physical object, the more it gets worn, the more its
value decreases. For symbolic goods, it is precisely the opposite. The more
an idea is used, the more it gains legitimacy and recognition, the more
valuable it will become. A third limit is the issue of origin. It is not possible to unequivocally determine where the origin of an idea is. Even
complex material goods, such as automobiles, are produced as spare parts
in several locations and only assembled in one location. It is not possible
to assign a single origin to these goods. To develop an analysis of origin,
one would have to distinguish fuzzy ideas that circulate everywhere from
more sticky ideas that evolve with other ideas and then eventually concepts (as institutionalized ideas) that are either used by everyone or attributed to and appropriated by some individuals and groups.
Bourdieu’s take illustrates a bias found in a lot of sociological studies.
Kantian and neo-Kantian analysis of the social conditions of ideas and
Translation and the Politics of Circulating Ideas
185
knowledge warrants not studying the ideas themselves. Ideas as such are
somehow too vague, and besides they quickly make out of the sociologist
an ‘idealist’. Thus ‘material’ forces become more important in analysis of
symbolic power struggles than symbolic forces, and sociologists systematically reduce symbolic forces to ‘material’ forces such as institutional
structures or networks (Collins 1998). Consequently, there are few sociological studies of ideas, but numerous studies on what some would call
epiphenomena such as institutions of higher education (HE) and intellectual communities.
Texts Interact in a Variety of Contexts
If one interprets social conditions in a broad way as Bourdieu does, the
problem is that the level of contextuality of the texts circulating will
depend on the texts in question. Even a sentence like Luther’s (or at least
it has been successfully attributed to him) ‘Gedanken sind zollfrei’ does
not circulate context free if it circulates with Luther’s name after it, and
in German. Its immediate practical significance might not be exactly the
same everywhere, as Marx and Engels argue about the French texts read
by Germans. But while perfect equivalence in translation is almost never
reached it nevertheless clearly points to the idea that government cannot
control thoughts.
Some texts like academic texts circulate with a lot of context. There are
also different kinds of contexts that depend on the kind of reading that is
applied to them; they could be called close contexts and far contexts. Close
contexts include Luther’s name after ‘Gedanken sind zollfrei’, references in
academic texts, notes with secondary comments, the translator’s preface
and so on, which give indications of the conditions of (re-)production.
Far contexts are those that are visible only to experts, the subtle nuances,
the references missing, the tug-of-war with academic rivals and so on. The
usage of contexts and the form of contextuality will also vary from culture to another. In some cultures, referencing systems are scientific,
with an idea of the cumulative character of knowledge. References cannot consist only of texts from the same nation-state, as in Bourdieu’s
example. An author has to refer to all the works published in a certain
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area to show her originality. It would be unprofessional not to do that. In
other contexts, references are essentially ‘clientelistic’; that is, authors refer
only to ‘other members of the club’. In these contexts, every ambitious
intellectual has to cultivate the art of appropriating other people’s ideas,
without referring to them. It is a stretch to argue that texts circulate without their context without further qualifications.
Political Agency Is Central in Circulating Ideas
In many studies, including Bourdieu’s, conceptual transfer/stretching/
shift take place in a power vacuum without agency. Concepts just travel,
are diffused, or circulate by themselves. In reality, concepts are transferred
between contexts that are embedded in a variety of hierarchical spaces
that can be linguistic or cultural for instance. Intellectual centers and
peripheries have different roles to play in the transnational circulation of
ideas and concepts and in the processes that determine the political and
intellectual value of ideas. The accumulation of academic resources like
Nobel prizes and Fields medals give us indications of these centers.
Traveling would not be possible without power strategies that are technologically varied (print, Internet, social media bubbles). Individuals transport by citing, critiquing and reproducing ideas. Transfers/shifts/diffusion
are then part of the normal activities that individuals and groups develop
to further some interests or goals, be they ideational or material or both,
or to comply to or challenge the power of the centers and dominant
discourses.
Circulation Means Interpretation
A further assumption of a lot of research on the circulation/reproduction/diffusion of ideas, is that concepts (defined here as institutionalized,
that is stabilized ideas) travel from one context to another unchanged;
that is, a concept will express exactly the same idea in context A and in
context B (either institutional, national, linguistic or cultural context)
without involving any translation in the process. It is more complicated
in reality (Link 2015, p. 56). Technical terms, such as Parliament and
Translation and the Politics of Circulating Ideas
187
some numbers like 101, will find accurate equivalents in several languages
because Parliament is a technical term invented for the purpose of representing a reality that is grosso modo equivalent to realities represented by
concepts like Assemblée nationale or Eduskunta. Numbers ‘represent’
realities that are similar, except for some numbers like 5 or 3 which are
used in a variety of ideational contexts. But most ‘ordinary’ concepts will
have difficulty in finding accurate equivalents in other languages. For
these conceptual stretching and shifting, or production instead of reproduction, translation and not conceptual transfer is the norm.
To use linguistic terms, the form of the content of nontechnical concepts will vary more than the form of content of technical concepts
(Hjelmslev 1961). In order to understand what a concept, even a technical one, means one has to situate it in relation to other, close concepts
that form together through association a historically evolving semantic
field. For instance, in order to fully understand the meaning of a concept
like Assemblée nationale or lower chamber in the French context, one has
to relate it to that of Sénat or upper chamber in the same political context. These are complementary institutions with a codified division of
labor. In order to understand the meaning and more broadly value of a
concept one has to study semantic fields and not individual concepts.
Similarly, concepts make little sense outside of their discursive contexts.
Additionally, even technical concept will be embedded in discourses that
will also consist of nontechnical terms. Technical and nontechnical concepts will thus, in areas like the social sciences, coexist in multiple ways.
Circulation never involves one idea or concept but several.
The value of an idea or concept, the uses that will be made of it, will
depend on the state of the debates/controversies in the context where the
concept ‘lives’, or where it is adopted or appropriated, engaging actors in
theoretical competition. The theoretical competition I have in mind is
not, like for merchandise or intellectual property, economic, legal or government regulated. It is conventional, based on establishing practices
(orthopraxy or heteropraxy) that associate ideas to people and groups and
this way enable a control of their use. Due to their implicit character,
conventions have a firmer grip on actors compared to explicitly codified
legal rules that can be contested. Monopoly mechanisms refer to the
institutionalization or codification of ideas into concepts, of their p
­ olitical
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value, of the ways they can be used and their legitimate commentators.
This process is conditioned by the activities of numerous individuals and
the reinforcement/contestation of various existing status hierarchies.
In Conclusion
This chapter started with a quote by Thomas Jefferson on ideas not being
the property of anyone. Reality is different. In the intellectual world,
there is constant priority competition concerning the origin of ideas, in
terms of original inventors and legitimate owners and commentators.
Intellectual power stems from these struggles and the appropriations/
attributions that follow. Bourdieu proposes a model for the analysis of the
ownership of ideas. But the national ownership, merchandise and import-­
export approach to the circulation of ideas he develops is inadequate for
the understanding of the complexity of the circulation of ideas. First, the
international dimension with clear nation-state limits and established
cultural status hierarchies oversimplifies the complicated landscape of
transnational circulation. Second, ideas are not just objectified material
goods but have symbolic properties such as values that need to be taken
into account in the analysis. Third, redescription to use an old rhetorical
term rather than transfer/shift or production/reproduction is a more apt
term to describe the circulation of ideas. Interpretation, and thus deformation, is a key feature of this process. Fourth, symbolic goods are not
uniform. The circulation of representations has to be separated from that
of concepts. The circulation of ideas takes place in variously institutionalized, real and virtual transnational spaces that are hierarchically structured in terms of intellectual centers and peripheries. The life of ideas
spans from the symbolic elaboration and institutionalization of representations into materialized concepts, to attempts by a variety of actors to
monopolize and define these, and then to beat the competition by transforming the definition of the concept into something taken for granted,
thus universalizing a particular definition and the values and interests
that go with it. Conflicting interests are transported under the cloak of
ideational struggle, and there are elective affinities between ideational and
material interests that need to be empirically demonstrated.
Translation and the Politics of Circulating Ideas
189
Notes
1. In analyzing political innovations (transplantation of institutions), some
sociologists have used the terms intellectual import-export.
2. Attributing an origin will also enable us to say if an idea is a foreign idea
or a domestic idea. In Western thinking, at least since Plato and the
Sophists, everything foreign is suspect whereas everything that can be
attributed a place of origin, an original habitat so to speak, can claim to be
legitimate. As the Sophists were itinerant teachers who were not tied to a
context and its conventions and taught for money, they were considered
as being illegitimate (even today saying somebody is a Sophist is
pejorative).
3. Reception is then as important as production and necessarily leads to
‘misunderstandings’.
Bibliography
Bourdieu, P. (1989). ‘Les conditions sociales de la circulation internationale des
idées’, Frankreich-Zentrum, University of Freibug i. Breisgau. 30 October.
Published in Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales (2002) 145: 3–8 and as
‘The Social Conditions of the International Circulation of Ideas’ (1999), in
Schusterman, R. (Ed.), Bourdieu. A Critical Reader (pp. 220–228). Oxford:
Blackwell.
Collins, R. (1998). The Sociology of Philosophies. A Global Theory of Intellectual
Change. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
de Swaan, A. (2001). Words of the World. The Global Language System. Cambridge:
Polity.
Glick-Schiller, N., & Wimmer, A. (2002). Methodological Nationalism and
Beyond: Nation-State Building, Migration and the Social Sciences. Global
Networks, 2(4), 301–334.
Hjelmslev, L. (1961). Prolegomena to a Theory of Language. Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press.
Link, P. (2015). The Wonderfully Elusive Chinese Novel. New York Review of
Books, 62(7), 56–58.
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1969). Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy.
Aylesbury: Fontana/Collins.
Rogers, E. (1962). The Diffusion of Innovations. New York: The Free Press.
Shusterman, R. (Ed.). (1999). Bourdieu: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
12
The Secondary Reality of the Media
Bourdieu had a lot to say about communications, even though his attitude was dominated by a paradox: on the one hand, he held communication to be a key symbolic activity; on the other hand, he reached as a
scientist at a level of existence where reality is not so much communicated as it is imposed on us. My purpose here is to select some relevant
key findings and themes from Bourdieu’s extensive work. In this chapter,
I will explore the relationship between Bourdieu’s idea on communication and his political philosophy. Two questions interest me in this context: Bourdieu’s analysis of the social activities as symbolic, or more
broadly as sign activity and his analysis of political representation, and its
links to the wider civil society and the critique of representative democracy. My text is divided into two parts. In the first part, I present Bourdieu’s
analysis of television. In the second part, I deal with Bourdieu’s social
reality analysis and his criticism of representative democracy.
Bourdieu’s relationship with the media is multidimensional and complex. Opening it up requires two textual operations: a redefinition of some
of the terms he used and a reflection on his broader social theory. But in
my view, the roots of Bourdieu’s media critique roots are deeper than his
theoretical and empirical work. They can be found in his ­scientific habitus,
© The Author(s) 2018
N. Kauppi, Toward a Reflexive Political Sociology of the European Union,
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71002-0_12
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in which ethics, science and politics are intertwined. He considered himself an activist-scholar who intervened with the authority of science in
ongoing discussions in society. The requirement of an ethics of purity
meant, until the mid-1990s, protecting scientific impartiality from party
politics. He combined, perhaps in an old-fashioned way, a suspicion of the
French media to theoretically enlightened analysis of cultural production.
On Television
The massive 1995 strikes in France led to a number of television debates,
in which Bourdieu also took part. Bourdieu criticized the French media
for its commercialism. He published a little red book, Sur la télévision,
which became a hit. The book is the transcription of a two-hour lecture.
The work confirms what Bourdieu’s position has been about communication: the power of the message comes more from the social position of the
speaker than from the message itself.
In his pamphlet, Bourdieu dissects ‘fast-thinking’ or the cultivation of
worn platitudes and television’s inability to produce profound social
debates. In the French context, the use of the English language term ‘fast-­
thinking’ is not a coincidence. With its negative connotations, it is deeply
embedded in the French collective psyche. The usage of the English term
sets the discussion in the framework of centuries-old American/English-­
French cultural and political war. The former colonizer, France, has
become a colonized, second-row power living in the past. The term also
links with other similar terms that are used in French, such as ‘fast food’.
These are often associated with mediocre quality. Because it is quick
tempo and dictated by the lowest common denominator, ‘fast-thinking’
does not allow a distance to develop, a distance which is, in Bourdieu’s
own cultural frame of reference, the precondition for serious thinking
and more broadly ‘quality’. In addition to these, Bourdieu sets ‘fast-­
thinking’ into another broader framework, the conditions of publicity.
Who defines what the media says? What are the power mechanisms that
control media debates and the wider dissemination of information?
Bourdieu himself did not want to be ‘fast-thinker’, although he tried
it on several occasions. He found out through personal experience that
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the TV format was such that it did not fulfill his criteria for a satisfactory, intelligent and sophisticated discussion. In his book Sur la télévision, Bourdieu sought to analyze the forces acting in the journalistic
field. Audience measurements had become a kind of ‘commercial referendum’, followed slavishly by television bosses and program producers.
Commercial forces have a negative impact on the production of culture. Publishers want to publish books that are easily presented on TV
shows, thus increasing the number of ‘half-educated’ but selling books.
The key effect of this activity is the mixing of genres or categories.
Journalists present themselves as intellectuals, ‘fast-thinkers’ with an academic background produce ‘half-scholarly’ essays, opinions are presented as facts, and entertainment as information. One presents oneself
as someone he or she is not.
This reversal of right and wrong is a familiar theme in all of Bourdieu’s
work. Creating and switching categories is a key instrument of social
power. Honest journalism or academic work should not accept this kind
of production of intellectual counterfeit goods. Paradoxically, the tone of
Bourdieu’s writing in this pamphlet as in Contre-feux is quite moralistic
and conservative. He seems to protest above all against the violation of
the purity of scientific (and journalistic) practices, in his words that good
and bad have changed places.
Bourdieu’s text raises a number of important issues that have to do
with the diffusion of scientific knowledge in society. According to
Bourdieu, it is impossible for a serious scholar to get her message through
on television as long as journalists, celebrities and media-savvy, aspiring
intellectuals hold the monopoly of speech. In the era of ‘fast-thinking’,
getting a dissenting opinion through in the media is difficult. Bourdieu
believes that specialized information and knowledge, accumulated
through hard work seem to be doomed in advance into silence and oblivion. Is this the fate of critical information in our system of knowledge
production?
From the point of view of communication research, perhaps the most
interesting part of Bourdieu’s reflections is his analysis of French journalism. It focuses on the main tension in the field of journalism, between
commercialism and professionalism. His central argument is that the
journalistic field has lost its independence at the expense of c­ ommercialism.
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Commercialism leads to dependence on external forces that in turn
define journalistic content and format. The judgment of the market
replaces recognition by peers. Like the political and economic fields, the
journalistic field is subject to the continuous judgment of the market.
Sanctions can be direct as in the case of consumer preferences or indirect
via viewer figure measurements.
How does the journalistic field affect other fields, such as politics and
culture? The effect is mediated by the general structural features of fields.
Journalism reinforces through structural equivalence in all other fields
actors, institutions and practices that are in the ‘commercial’ poles of
these fields, that is those that are more susceptible to outside influences.
The journalistic field has therefore become a dominant field in our societies, and it affects the development of other fields. This is due to the fact
that journalists, paraphrasing Weber, ‘hold a de facto monopoly of
knowledge production and its large-scale dissemination’ (Bourdieu 1999,
p. 67). Bourdieu also analyzes changes in knowledge production.
Competition between data producers, the pace of news production and
the interests of media owners are, to name a few factors, forces that gnaw
at journalistic independence.
On the Nature of Reality
According to the structural constructivist point of view, reality is socially
or collectively constructed and reproduced through various symbolic acts
such as speeches and writings. Reality is mostly ‘non-material’. All social
activities and interaction are mediated by symbols or signs. The structuration of reality is increasingly visual and digital, in which case the
relationship between image and text becomes key. Social reality and its
nature is also ultimately the result of a political struggle. Bourdieu does
not analyze further the semiotic structuration of society, and thus the different modalities of society production. However, this is necessary if we
are to understand the nature of reality and the communication mechanisms that guide it.
Communication with others is a central feature of social reality. In
Bourdieu’s framework, the categories of language play a key role. The
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mind works in a binary fashion. Especially in his early anthropological
works, Bourdieu analyzed the strategies of various groups, social rites and
myths as parts of an objective, collective world. During his field work in
Algeria, he observed that the local Berber population classified all acts
performed inside their house according to distinctions such man/woman,
cooked/raw, day/night. The structures of the world corresponded to the
structures of the mind. However, these dichotomies do not just apply to
knowledge or the nature of reality. They are also value-laden, moral divisions which are used to classify individuals and groups. For example, various institutions such as the presidential institution cannot be reduced to
the institution’s representative, the president’s speeches or the presidential
palace. It is inseparably intertwined with countless ‘intangible’ collective
and individual memories and emotions, which actually form the main
part of the institution, and to the social construction of which we all
participate 24 hours a day.
Let us compare the presidency as an institution to a chair. The word
‘chair’ corresponds to the physical reality quite unambiguously. The same
cannot be said of the ‘president-institution’, the reproduction of which is
more a symbolic process. This means two things. The first relates to the
modality of reproduction of reality. Like the trade union movement, the
president of the institution is reproduced largely through symbolic activities that require constant discursive and practical action. In a sense, the
existence of these social institutions is on a weaker footing, less ‘solid’
(Castoriadis 1997) because they are so dependent on symbolic action.
This ‘weakness’ may also be related to the fact that social practices are
guided through broad and flexible schemas. Weakly structured parts of
reality are those that do not engage a habitus’s internalized social structures. Paradoxically, in some cases the more subjective and emotionally
charged the elements are, the ‘more solid’ they are. In reality, the chair is
of course never just a chair. Bourdieu did not explore this level of emotional reality, although it is quite central to the legitimacy of social
institutions.
As social reality is largely or almost entirely the result of such a continuous and incessant invisible interaction, it is the result of profoundly
political activity, in which groups with various power resources are struggling to define its nature. Interaction does not happen in a power ­vacuum.
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Rather, the dominant groups in society seek to define the nature of reality, thus influencing the content and form of communication, all the way
down to television programs and their formats. This way they try to shape
the nature of reality, its ontology.
Bibliography
Bourdieu, P. (1999). Televisiosta. Helsinki: Otava.
Castoriadis, C. (1997). Magma. Tutkielma yhteiskunnan imaginaarisista instituutioista. Helsinki: Hanki ja jää.
13
Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Politics:
An Interpretation
Bourdieu’s theory of politics offers a powerful vision of society and new
instruments for the study of social domination and electoral politics.
Drawing mostly on Max Weber, but also on Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx
and Robert Michels, Bourdieu elaborated a complex but pessimistic and
disenchanted view of politics. In his later years, he became a prominent
political figure in the antiglobalization struggle. The aim of this chapter
is to present concisely Bourdieu’s theory of politics.1
Bourdieu’s theory of politics can be divided into three components: a
general analysis of the social aspects of the political (le politique) and
domination, a more specific analysis of politics (la politique), and the
political practice that he developed at the end of his career. In this chapter, I will discuss the first two and briefly come back to the third one at
the end. The first component elaborates chiefly on Weber’s sociology of
domination and its analysis of the political, where everything social can
be considered political (see Kauppi et al. 2016). In Bourdieu’s structuralist framework, the struggle for domination takes place between the dominant and the dominated. The second component restricts political action
to a specific social location, the political field. Here, in contrast to the first
© The Author(s) 2018
N. Kauppi, Toward a Reflexive Political Sociology of the European Union,
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71002-0_13
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component, following Weber’s idea of life spheres (Lebenssfäre) (Bourdieu
2000b), Bourdieu sees politics as forming an area of social activity that
can be separated from other areas of social activity such as the economy,
education and culture. For Bourdieu, the division of society into social
classes forms the explanatory basis for the analysis of political activity,
and the world of representation is one site of the political struggle between
the dominant and the dominated. I will first discuss Bourdieu’s analysis
of social domination, through topics such as political judgment and delegation, and then his theory of the political field.
Social Domination
To conferre all their power and strength upon one Man, or upon one
Assembly of men, that may reduce all their Wills, by plurality of voices,
unto one Will ... this done, the Multitude so united in one Person, is called
a COMMON-WEALTH, in latine CIVITAS. (Hobbes 1991, p. 120)
In Bourdieu’s mind, the right that its citizens have to formulate political opinions and frame political judgments is the fundamental characteristic of any democratic regime. In theory, democracy is composed of
citizens who, with certain age limits, are all equal. However, as Bourdieu
demonstrates in his numerous studies on political opinion (cf. for
instance, Bourdieu 1984, pp. 397–465), socially the ability to produce a
political opinion and to form a political judgment is unequally distributed. The technical competence that has to do with political judgment is
actually a social competence. This ability varies with educational qualifications and age, among other factors. Those endowed with cultural and
economic resources will also be able to make political judgments. As in
other areas of social activity, in politics a concentration of the objectified
or embodied instruments of production of political opinions can be
observed. In this sense, Western democracies are already selective democracies, as only part of the population has the symbolic means to produce
a political opinion, to access the order of political discourse, and thus to
fully partake in political culture.
Not every answer to a question considered as being political is necessarily the product of a political judgment. Bourdieu differentiates three
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modes of production of opinion (Bourdieu 1984, pp. 417–8). The first
depends on class ethos, which enables the opinion provider to formulate
coherent, commonsense answers that follow the logic of everyday existence. Political principles, ‘slant’, or logos provide the grounding for the
second mode of production of political opinion. Both modes are amenable to logical control and reflexive scrutiny. A third mode of production of political opinion consists of delegation of the formulation of
political opinions to an organization providing a political line, such as a
party, trade union or other political organization. This delegation can be
based on either class ethos or ‘slant’.
What differentiates the first mode of production from the second and
the third is that in the case of class ethos, the principles of production of
political judgment are implicit. The relationship between class and opinion is direct and unconscious. In Bourdieu’s mind, this is very problematic, as ‘dispositions without consciousness are self-opaque and always
exposed to seduction by false recognitions’ (Bourdieu 1984, p. 420). In
contrast, the relationship between social class and political opinion is
indirect in the second and third modes, mediated by the logos of either a
specific political axiomatic or a political organization. Bourdieu provides
a complementary division in the analysis of political opinion with production by proxy versus first-person production. He designates as production by proxy the delegation of the power to produce political
opinions to a party or other political organization that represents the
individual. By first-person production Bourdieu means that individuals
use their own resources to formulate political opinions.
As the ability to formulate political opinions is unequally distributed,
those with more educational resources are more likely to be able to formulate them than those who have none. In Bourdieu’s words, ‘The probability of producing a political response to a politically constituted
question rises as one moves up the social hierarchy (and the hierarchy of
incomes and qualifications)’ (Bourdieu 1984, p. 427). Bourdieu also analyzes the social mechanisms that influence the ability to produce an
answer to a ‘political question’ (Bourdieu 1977, pp. 55–89). Variations in
this ability depend less on technical expertise or on knowledge of politics
than on the social competence that translates into the feeling of having
the right to have a political opinion (Champagne 1991). In other words,
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the ability to imagine the political is as unequally distributed as is political competence.
Bourdieu is interested in the role played by faith and trust in political
judgment, especially in the case of production by proxy. An element of
implicit faith is inscribed in the logic of political choice. The choice of
representatives involves choosing not only among programs and ideas but
also among personalities. The first element of uncertainty concerns the
object of judgment: Is it a person or is it a set of ideas? Because a person
is endowed with a certain habitus, s/he embodies certain ideas that might
not be expressed at the moment of choice. These unexpressed ideas and
opinions exist in an implicit mode. On the one hand, the representative
expresses the already formulated ideas of her electors, and, on the other
hand, she follows her own ‘internal programme—or the specific interests
associated with her position in the field of ideological production’
(Bourdieu 1984, p. 424). In some cases, there is correspondence between
speech and spokesperson. However, even in these cases usurpation is possible, as the representative might bring into existence opinions that were
not previously expressed and thus were not known by the mandators at
the moment they made their choice.
In surveys, the least competent persons in matters of political opinion
must choose between answers that take on their meaning in relation to a
political issue, that is, to a political position in the field of ideological
production. Because these individuals can produce a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer
to a question but cannot necessarily grasp the political meaning of the
question asked, those asking the questions can impose on them a political
position. In this way, ‘the respondents are dispossessed of the meaning of
their response’, (Bourdieu 1984, p. 428) a response which is totally alien
to their own opinion but which is nevertheless presented as being their
opinion. These least competent persons either then respond to an alien
question or answer the question as they understand it, retranslating it
into their own language. Thus, ‘rationalization of budgetary options’
becomes ‘not wasting money’ (Bourdieu 1984, p. 428). Through this
mechanism, the respondent resorts to her class ethos and its unconscious
presuppositions. Bourdieu underlines the conservative nature of these
predispositions, tied to the world by practical logic. The task of formulating revolutionary political stances is left to political organizations.
Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Politics: An Interpretation
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The field of ideological production is the realm of professional politicians. It is in this realm that political problems, programs and ready-­
made solutions are produced. This production of political opinion and
judgment attempts to achieve collective mobilization around common
problems, to universalize certain particular interests by making their particular condition appear universal. However, part of the problem of
translation of the implicit into the explicit is that there is a radical discontinuity between condition and discourse, between ethos and logos. That
is, the unconscious character of practical logic, its inscription in bodily
hexis, that is, in everyday schemes of perception and appreciation, and in
the implicit political underpinnings of class habitus, do not necessarily
translate into definite political stances or opinions understood as positions in the field of ideological production. It is precisely because of the
indeterminacy of the relationship between ethos and logos that professional political agents of all kinds—politicians, journalists, publicists and
so on—play such a key role in the production of political opinion, shaping the world of the politically imaginable and the structures and main
dividing lines of the field of ideological production.
Bourdieu’s theory of electoral and democratic politics concentrates on
analysis of political representation and symbolic political struggles.
Following Thomas Aquinas, Bourdieu discusses the delegation of political power by the people to a representative as a form of alienation
(Bourdieu 2000a, p. 101). The people alienate their original sovereignty
to a plenipotentiary representative, a party and an individual. An isolated
individual cannot make himself heard in politics unless s/he transforms
this isolated voice into group voice. But this means s/he must dispossess
himself or herself of a voice in order to escape political dispossession. In
a landmark study entitled ‘Delegation and Political Fetishism’, Bourdieu
analyzes the power of delegation as a purely political power that enables
a group to form by delegating power to a representative (Bourdieu 1981a,
pp. 49–55, 1991, pp. 203–19). In a very Durkheimian fashion, the process of delegation becomes a case of social magic in which a person such
as a minister, a priest or a deputy is identified with a group of people: the
workers, the nation, believers and so on. The group no longer exists as a
collection of individuals but rather, through this representative, as a social
agent. In this case, delegation signifies alienation implicitly consented to
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by those represented and dissimulated usurpation by the representative.
As Robert Michels put it: ‘le parti, c’est moi’ (Michels 1962, p. 220),
Bourdieu reveals the double process of recognition and misrecognition
inscribed in political delegation: ‘a symbolic power is a power which presupposes recognition, that is, misrecognition of the violence that is exercised through it’ (Bourdieu 1991, p. 209).
The representative exists in a metonymical relationship with the group.
S/he is a member of the group, that is, a part of it, but at the same time
s/he stands for the group as a whole and is a sign of the group. The representative represents the group and speaks in its name (Bourdieu 1981a,
p. 50), the relationship between representative and represented being
similar to that between signifier and signified. But at the same time, those
represented have a fides implicita in the representative. S/he is given a
blank check. Bourdieu seems to say that this separation of rulers and
ruled means that democracy is impossible. The paradox of the monopolization of collective truth is for Bourdieu the principle of all symbolic
imposition: a person speaks in the name of the group and thus manipulates the group in its own name (Bourdieu 1981a, 52). The organization
quickly supplements the group. ‘People are there and speak. Then comes
the party official, and people come less often. And then there is an organization, which starts to develop a specific competence, a language all of
its own’ (Bourdieu 1981a, pp. 54–5, 1991, p. 218).
In his discussion of how groups function, Bourdieu sketches two
approaches to the problem of political opinion and competence. The
first type centers on markets, votes and polls. In such approaches, individuals are demobilized, and groups are reduced to aggregates (Bourdieu
2000a, b, p. 85). In the case of individual speech or of voice, to use
Albert Hirschman’s term (Hirschman 1970), the mode of aggregation is
statistical or mechanical. It is independent of the individuals and the
group does not exist politically, that is, as a political entity. Bourdieu
contrasts this conception, which he calls liberal (Bourdieu 2000a, b,
p. 82) with Émile Durkheim’s corporatist conception of political opinion. According to Durkheim (1950, p. 138)—and before him JeanJacques Rousseau—individual votes would ideally be animated by a
collective spirit. They would express the community’s opinion or will
and constitute a relatively permanent and coherent group. The ­elementary
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electoral college should be not a collection of isolated individuals but
rather a permanent and integrated group, a body with a spirit animated
by tacit accord founded on complicity. For Bourdieu, this corporatist
philosophy is the implicit philosophy of electoral democracy (Bourdieu
2000a, b, p. 83).
Bourdieu analyzes political action as consisting mostly or even exclusively of symbolic action: speeches, writings and other symbolic interventions. A key concept in Bourdieu’s sociology of domination is that of
symbolic violence. Here he is not referring to symbolic systems à la
Durkheim. Symbolic power does not stem from the illocutionary force of
speech, as it does for Austin or Searle. Rather, words have an effect when
they confirm or transform the vision people have of the world. Behind
the words is belief in the person who utters them and in the legitimacy of
the words uttered. ‘Who is speaking?’ is the first question that should be
asked when the legitimacy of a political message is being evaluated.
Symbols make visible and make invisible. They reveal certain aspects of
reality while hiding others. The working class does not exist as a physical
entity; it is a symbolic construction that has become real because it has
become an accepted part of political reality. The same goes for the state
and most concepts that form part of political reality. These entities exist
to the extent that representatives feel authorized to speak in their name,
thus giving them real political force.
Symbolic violence is the basic mechanism by which domination is
unconsciously reproduced by the dominated. In Bourdieu’s theory, the
dominated have to participate in the domination that is exerted on them;
otherwise it would not be legitimate. Reproduction of domination takes
place with the consent of those dominated. Symbolic violence is transmitted in language and in social practices and can be found in all human
interaction. It is everywhere. Theoretically, at least, it can be contrasted
with actions performed voluntarily. In practice, however, it is difficult to
separate the two. The concept of symbolic violence can also be contrasted
with that of physical violence, which is the monopoly of the state. In
contrast to Michel Foucault’s work (1980), Bourdieu barely talks about
physical violence and mastery over bodies (Bon and Schemeil 1980,
p. 1203), though the public control of this kind of violence is a key feature of state formation. Instead, Bourdieu emphasizes the symbolic
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aspects of domination and the symbolic violence exercised by the schooling system, art, law and more generally, culture.
Political action means acting on the social world, often by attempting
to break with the world as a natural entity. Radical political action engages
a radical epistemology (Bachelard 1980) that questions the world as it is
usually interpreted. Politics then has to do with the struggle over the
legitimate definition of reality. For Bourdieu, the object of politics par
excellence is knowledge of the social world. In the political arena, the
value of an idea depends less on its truth value than on its power to mobilize: ideas are power ideas (idées-forces) (Bourdieu 2000a, b). Power ideas
cannot be proven true or false. The only way for opponents to refute
them is to oppose them with some alternative power ideas. The political
weight of power ideas will depend on their capacity to mobilize, or to
universalize, which is the precondition for mobilization. In politics, saying is doing only to the extent that a political agent is politically responsible and capable of guaranteeing that the group will carry out the actions
that the agent requires. Only then will political agents consider a political
statement to be equivalent to an act. But the truthfulness of power ideas
is not verifiable or falsifiable when the ideas are expressed. Only if a statement such as ‘I will win the elections to the presidency’ is realized in the
future will it be considered historically true.
Bourdieu’s analysis of political opinion, delegation and the symbolic
aspects of politics reduces politics to a struggle for domination. However,
this conflict model is constructed on a harmony model based on the social
characteristics of the agents involved in the struggle and their structural
positions in various fields. The social field functions as the base structure
of politics, the political game being the superstructure. In this vision, politics is about fetishism and the world of appearances (Derrida 1993). The
real game is backstage in the social field, connected to the political field by
any number of homologies or structural equivalences. In the social field,
as in any field of social activity, social class is the ultimate determinant of
success or failure for any individual. Instead of the Marxist dichotomy of
the economic versus the cultural, one finds in Bourdieu’s theory of politics
the dichotomy of the social versus the symbolic or the political.
Bourdieu’s analysis of social domination creates a picture of social life
that is too uniform. Although some might say that modern Western
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states keep a monopoly over physical violence through the army and the
police, it is grossly exaggerated to say that the state holds the monopoly
over symbolic violence. This is because while physical violence can be
monopolized and its existence empirically verified, the same cannot be
said of symbolic violence (Addi 2000, pp. 950–4).
The power over bodies is of a different nature than the power over
minds, which cannot be dominated by just one institution. Families, religions, companies, the media and various kinds of associations and organizations compete with the state and other public institutions for control
of this kind.
The Political Field
There are general laws of fields: fields as different as the field of politics,
philosophy or religion have invariant laws of functioning (that is why the
project of a general theory is not unreasonable and why, even now, we can
use what we learn about the functioning of each particular field to question and interpret other fields) (Bourdieu 1984, p. 72).
It is perhaps in Bourdieu’s concept of the political field that his debt to
Max Weber is the clearest, as he acknowledges himself: ‘[Max Weber was]
the scholar who came the closest to the notion of field yet, at the same
time, never reached it’ (le chercheur qui s’est le plus rapproché de la
notion de champ et qui, en même temps, a toujours été privé de cette
notion) (Bourdieu 1996, p. 7, my translation). In contrast to Weber’s
social spheres (Weber 1922, p. 542; Gerth and Mills 1991/1948,
p. 331ff), Bourdieu’s concept of the field is structural (Bourdieu 2000a,
b, pp. 111–125). In his political theory, he conceptualizes politics topologically. The political field constitutes a space that is structured such that
the value of each element of it is formed through the network of relationships this element entertains with the other elements in the field. In theory, then, the relative value of an element is determined by this set of
relationships and not by any external factors, such international politics
or the state of the economy in the case of the political field. Following
Saussurean precepts, value is relational and not substantial. For this reason, distinction does not imply a search for distinction, as in Thorstein
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Veblen’s theory of the leisure class. An element is always distinctive, that
is distinguishable in theory and practice from other elements in a structure. If it was not, it would not exist. For this reason, intentionality is not
an issue in Bourdieu’s field theory, or in his theory of the political field,
preventing the development of an adequate theory of social action.
Like any field, the political field is subject to some general principles.
The most important of these modus operandi is the field’s organization
around two opposite poles: the protagonists of change and the apostles of
law and order, the progressives and the conservatives, the heterodox and
the orthodox. This binary logic not only structures political parties and
ideologies; it permeates the political field as a whole, from political parties and other political organizations between the progressive and conservative wings, all the way down to the habitus of an individual who might
have evolved from a radical youth into a conservative party official. The
tension between order and change is present in the activities of revolutionary movements at all times: for instance, in the hesitations of their
leaders about using violence against their own supporters in order to
effectively combat state authorities. As the political field becomes more
autonomous, these struggles are sedimented and institutionalized, eventually forming part of the objectified and materialized social unconscious.
Each political organization and the field as a whole develop their own
esoteric cultures that are alien to outsiders.
The social resources that structure the political field are political capital, as the specific resource that agents attempt to accumulate in the political field, economic capital and cultural capital (Caro 1980, pp. 1171–97;
Gaxie 1973). ‘Political capital is a form of symbolic capital, credit founded
on credence or belief and recognition or, more precisely, on the innumerable operations of credit by which agents confer on a person (or on an
object) the very powers that they recognize in him (or it)’ (Bourdieu
1991, p. 192). Individuals are distributed throughout the field, first
according to the overall volume of capital they possess and second, following the composition of their capital (Bourdieu 1991, p. 231). Those
who succeed in accumulating the most political capital will be the dominant while those who have the least capital will be the dominated
(Bourdieu 1984, pp. 451–3). The position of an individual in this structure determines her assets and discourses. An individual cannot occupy
Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Politics: An Interpretation
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two positions at the same time. The structure is also a set of power relationships between individuals and groups in the political field. Moving
beyond Saussure and Lévi-Strauss, who developed the dominant social
scientific interpretation of Saussure’s theory, Bourdieu innovates by adding to power structures. Relationships are not only linguistic or symbolic
but also social, involving power relations.
In his text ‘Champ politique, champ des sciences sociales, champ journalistique’, Bourdieu discusses the political field as a microcosm of the
social macrocosm. Like other areas of social activity, it has its dominant
and dominated, its ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ and its right and left. As in other areas
of social activity, the more autonomous a field is, the more closed off it is
from the outside world. In a relatively autonomous political field, the
position of an individual will determine her political stances. Political
agents attempt to monopolize the legitimate means of manipulating the
social world (Bourdieu 1996, p. 13). They compete with journalists and
social scientists in the struggle for the ‘monopoly of legitimate symbolic
violence’ (Bourdieu 1996, p. 19), an idea taken from Weber’s discussion
of the priesthood having the monopoly over the legitimate manipulation
of the means of salvation and the state’s monopoly over legitimate violence (Weber 1968/1972, 1966, pp. 27–9).
The political field is ‘understood both as a field of forces and as a field
of struggles aimed at transforming the relation of forces which confers on
this field its structure at a given moment’ (Bourdieu 1981b, p. 3, 1991,
p. 171). It is composed of producers who have monopolized the production of political goods offered on the political marketplace. Ordinary citizens are reduced to the role of consumers exterior to this political field.
The political stances of the moment, as seen, for instance, in electoral
outcomes, are the result of an encounter between supply and demand.
Both legitimate supply and legitimate demand are historically formed
through social struggles between different groups to define them. Political
supply consists of political goods offered by political enterprises, parties,
trade unions, political clubs and so on. These goods can be either symbolic, consisting of ideas and programs, or material, such as posts in the
party hierarchy. The same applies to demand, which has been collectively
and historically conditioned to take certain forms. Citizens have to
choose among different types of political goods, problems, programs,
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analysis, concepts, events and so on. Formally, consumers have equal
access to political goods. In practice, however, social factors, such as education and wealth, limit access. Those who do have access to these social
resources become knowledgeable consumers while those who lack these
resources have no alternatives and abstain in elections or rely totally on
their political representatives.
The influence of Weber’s discussion of the priesthood is also evident in
Bourdieu’s analysis of the relationship between political professionals and
amateurs (see Bourdieu 2000b for a discussion). As the political field
gains in autonomy, the profanes become increasingly dispossessed of the
properly political means of production of political goods. Professional
politicians that have gone through elite French schools like the Instituts
d’études politiques or the Ecole nationale d’administration gradually replace
amateur political activists (Bourdieu 1989). This way the criteria that
regulate entry into the political field also change. Bourdieu does not theorize the field’s levels of autonomy, but as the field becomes more autonomous its internal mechanisms play a more central role in political activity
(Weber 1968/1972, p. 608). To understand the specific meaning of a
political stance, one must situate it in a relational network composed on
the one hand of the other stances formulated at the time in the political
field and, on the other hand, of the structure of the demand.
As political capital becomes objectified into posts in the party apparatus, relative independence from electoral sanction develops. For individuals in normal times, the temptation to integrate into the political
apparatus grows as the material and symbolic spoils accumulated by the
party are redistributed to the followers (Cf. Weber 1966, pp. 63–4;
Bourdieu 1981a, b, pp. 19–21). Conversely, in exceptional or revolutionary times, staying in the political apparatus can be risky.
Political agents are always, though to varying degrees, involved in a
double game, the first internal to the political field and the second external to it, in the larger social field. In the political field itself, professionals
seek recognition from peers whereas in the social field they seek support
from the voters in elections. A political agent’s power in the political field
depends on her capacity to speak in the name of those exterior to it. A
political agent’s dependence on the political apparatus varies according to
her capital structure and volume. The less of other social resources such
Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Politics: An Interpretation
209
as education and personal wealth political agents have, the more dependent they are on the resources provided by delegation. The more they
invest in the political apparatus, the more they become dependent on it
(cf. also Michels 1962). Bourdieu has analyzed the social effects of this
dispossession in the case of the French Communist party (Bourdieu
1981c). In contrast to intellectual groups or an aristocratic club, this type
of political organization is built on both objective characteristics such as
the posts it offers for its followers, and on subjective dispositions such as
fidelity to the party and the convergence of its followers’ vision of the
world and that of its leaders and militants. As political parties get more
professional and more bureaucratic, professionals enter into competition
among themselves for control over the political apparatus. ‘The struggle
for the monopoly of the development and circulation of the principles of
division of the social world is more and more strictly reserved for professionals and for the large units of production and circulation, thus excluding de facto the small independent producers (starting with the ‘free
intellectuals’ (Bourdieu 1981c, p. 19, 1991, 196, see chapter 7). Thus,
according to the logic of monopolization of the supply of political goods,
the relatively limited access to these political goods of those most deprived
of economic and cultural resources is reinforced. The more socially
incompetent agents are in politics, the more they will depend on the supply of political goods and the more readily they will delegate their power
to political entrepreneurs and organizations. This mobilization requires,
from professional politicians, a double game, one in relation to the citizens and the other aimed at their competitors. In a very Weberian manner, Bourdieu assimilates political parties to military organizations that
mobilize their resources to defeat their competitors on the battlefield of
political life.
In parliamentary democracies, the struggle to win the support of the
citizens (their votes, their party subscriptions and so on) is also a struggle
to maintain or subvert the distribution of power over public powers (or,
in other words, a struggle for the monopoly of the legitimate use of objectified political resources—law, the army, police, public finances and so
on). The most important agents of this struggle are the political parties,
combative organizations specially adapted so as to engage in this sublimated form of civil war by mobilizing in an enduring way, through
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­ rescriptive predictions, the greatest possible number of agents endowed
p
with the same vision of the social world and its future. To ensure that this
enduring mobilization comes about, political parties must on the one
hand develop and impose a representation of the social world capable of
obtaining the support of the greatest possible number of citizens and on
the other hand win positions (whether of power or not) capable of ensuring that they can wield power over those who grant that power to them
(Bourdieu 1991, p. 181). The main object of struggle among professionals in the political field is recognition from peers, or political capital as a
specific type of symbolic capital. Bourdieu differentiates between two
types of political capital: that acquired by the individual and that acquired
by delegation. Individual political capital is the result either of slow accumulation, as in the case of French notables, or of action in a situation of
institutional void and crisis (Bourdieu 1981c, p. 18), in which case the
concept is close to Weber’s charismatic legitimacy. Personal political capital disappears with the physical disappearance of the person holding this
power. S/he is recognized and known for characteristics that are considered her own. Political capital is acquired by delegation through investiture by an institution, for instance, a political party or other political
enterprise. A person such as a priest, a professor, or any official, receives
from the institution a limited and provisional transfer of collective capital
composed of recognition and fidelity (Bourdieu 1981c, p. 19). Through
this process the capital is partly transformed from collective to personal.
Political capital becomes institutionalized in the form of posts and positions. Those in the service of political enterprises are their delegates.
Political capital by delegation thus refers to a situation where the power
of a politician depends on the power of her party and of her position in
the party. The leader of the party becomes, through investiture, a banker
(Bourdieu 2000a, p. 65) and the party a bank specialized in political capital. The banker controls access to this collective capital, which is bureaucratized and certified by the party’s bureaucracy. Citing Antonio Gramsci,
Bourdieu writes that political agents such as trade union representatives
are ‘bankers of men in a monopoly situation’ (Bourdieu 1991, p. 194).
Following Max Weber in his Zwischenbetrachtung (Weber 1922, p. 542;
Gerth and Mills 1991/1948, pp. 323–62), Bourdieu analyzes politics like
Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Politics: An Interpretation
211
any other area of social activity such as the economy, religion or education (Bourdieu 1971a, pp. 295–334, 1971b, pp. 3–21). In his theory, the
political field has the same structural characteristics as any other field.
Political capital is symbolic capital in the field of politics, a type of capital
that the agents involved in this field compete for. The political field has its
own, autonomous logic, a formal binary logic that is substantiated by the
historical development of political ideas, ideologies and practices. Agents
at the autonomous pole of the political field possess the most legitimate
type of political capital whereas those at the heteronomous pole of the
political field accumulate alternative types of political capital. The dominant has a lot of capital, the dominated relatively little. Through a process
of sociomimesis, agents’ political stances and political strategies follow
their positions in the political field. According to Bourdieu:
It is the structure of the political field, that is, the objective relation to the
occupants of other positions, and the relation to the competing stances
they offer which, just as much as any direct relation to those they represent,
determines the stances they take, i.e. the supply of political products.
(Bourdieu 1991, p. 246)
Bourdieu presents the struggles of the representatives as offering nothing but mimesis of the stances of the social groups or social classes they
represent. (Bourdieu 1991, p. 182). Representatives are thus simultaneously conditioned by their positions in the political field and their positions in the social field, at times miming one, at times the other, or even
both at the same time. The homologies between their positions in the
political field and the social field, and their locations in the political field
and the field of production of political stances, explains why they satisfy
the needs of their electors without even consciously attempting to do so.
As the congruence between representative and represented is of a semiotic or symbolic nature, resembling the relationship between signifier
and signified, congruence between what the representative says and what
the electors think is necessary for representation to exist. This congruence
also explains why, while competing with other politicians or political
enterprises in the political field, representatives also satisfy the interests of
those they represent. They serve themselves while serving others.
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Bourdieu’s theory is Durkheimian and functionalist in its holistic analysis of the political field and Weberian in its attempt to think of social
and political processes using economic terms as models. Following
Durkheim, Bourdieu sees the political in functionalist terms as forming a
whole that is more than the sum of its parts. The logic of the whole conditions the role of the parts, and the whole takes on a life of its own that
is independent of the parts. The logic of the political field determines the
stances taken (Bourdieu 1991, p. 184). Bourdieu also sees political activity in terms of rituals, institutions and symbolic action. A central ritual in
his theory is that of investiture, whereby an individual is chosen to represent and constitute a group. Like Weber, for whom the modern state is an
‘enterprise’ or a ‘business’ (Betrieb) (Weber 1972/1968), for Bourdieu the
offer and demand of political goods and the monopolization of capital
are the main processes of political activity. As a result, sociology and
political science paradoxically become subfields of economics (types of
minor economics), miming economic terms and thought schemes.
Political action becomes an inferior, being less rational, form of economic
action. In Bourdieu’s theory of the political field, politics is seen as the
realm of groups fighting for domination. Phenomena usually seen as
political, such as the public sphere (Habermas 1989) and the rule of law,
have no place in Bourdieu’s theory. Incorporating them would require
drawing qualitative differences between different types of political fields
and distinguishing politics from other human activities in nonformal
terms.
Bourdieu’s sociological theory of politics does not elaborate on the
specificity of democratic politics as a specific area of social activity.
Perhaps because politics is assimilated to power struggle, other, crucial
aspects of modern politics are not taken into account. For instance,
Bourdieu does not reflect enough on the specific historical meaning of
elections. This is curious because it marks the uniqueness of the political
process. After all, in other areas of social life the ruled do not chose their
rulers: students do not choose their professors, children do not choose
their parents, and workers do not choose their bosses. By law, public
­officials are supposed to further the public interest, although they also use
their legitimacy to further their particular ends. More nuanced distinctions have to be drawn between private and public power. In many
Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Politics: An Interpretation
213
national political fields, political power is seen as a legitimate public
power, and the state is perceived as being the guarantor of public order.
In contrast to Weber, whose approach was historical, Bourdieu does
not distinguish among different kinds of political fields. For Bourdieu,
the mechanism of power delegation operated the same way in the totalitarian Soviet Union as in democratic France (Bourdieu 2000a, p. 101)
and in the religious and political domains. In the manner of Rousseau, he
overemphasizes the profane’s blind belief in and total submission to the
delegate. However, people are not as easily duped as Bourdieu would
have us believe, and the media regularly denounces politicians for their
wheeling and dealing. Bourdieu’s analysis of the state, to which he devotes
a considerable amount of energy, is handicapped by insufficient analysis
of the concept of the public.
Since the 1960s, and through his works on education and culture,
Bourdieu has been studying the state, and specifically the French state. In
Bourdieu’s theory of politics, the genesis of the state is ‘the culmination
of a process of concentration of different kinds of capital, capital derived
from physical force or instruments of coercion (the army, the police),
economic capital, cultural, or better still informational capital, symbolic
capital; a concentration which, as such, translates into possession of a sort
of metacapital giving the bearer power over all the other kinds of capital
and those who possess them’ (l’aboutissement d’un processus de concentration de différentes espèces de capital, le capital de force physique ou
d’instruments de coercition (armée, police), capital économique, capital
culturel, ou, mieux, informationnel, capital symbolique, concentration
qui, en tant que telle, constitue l’état détenteur d’une sorte de méta capital donnant pouvoir sur les autres espèces de capital et sur leurs détenteurs)
(Bourdieu 1994, 109). Through a process of privatization of public power
prior to the existence of the state, certain social groups succeed in monopolizing various kinds of public authority. The new authority that emerges
becomes responsible for calling the shots and deciding about the relative
value of social resources and the exchange rates of these different types of
resources. The state participates in a decisive manner in the production
and reproduction of the instruments of construction of social reality. In
Bourdieu’s formulation, the state seems to be a kind of grand social organizer that ‘constantly exercises a formative action of durable dispositions’,
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N. Kauppi
of dauerhabitus to use Weber’s term (Weber 1922, p. 541). It imposes
fundamental principles of classification on everybody—sex, age, competence and so on (Bourdieu 1997, p. 209). Its influence is everywhere. In
the family, it controls the rites of institution; in the schooling system, it
creates divisions between the chosen and the rejected, durable, often
definitive symbolic divisions that are universally recognized and that
often have determining effects on the future of individuals. The individual’s submission to the state order is the result of the harmony between
cognitive structures, either collective or individual, and the objective
structures of the world to which they apply. It seems to be total.
Public authority is thus always private authority disguised as public
authority which has succeeded, through symbolic violence, in transforming itself and presenting itself as representing the collectivity. Competition
and symbolic violence among various groups—homo homini lupus—are
endless, instituted by society in Rousseauean manner but lacking the
positive basis Rousseau’s theory of primitive man has (1964, 2000). There
is no end to the struggle, no light at the end of the tunnel. In fact, it
seems that in Bourdieu’s theory, politics is by definition stateless, if the
state is understood as representing a shared public authority.
Conclusions
Following Weber (Lassman 2000, pp. 83–98), Michels (1962) and Marx,
Bourdieu assimilates political action with the continuous struggle for
power or power shares. In this he follows the Machiavellian tradition. The
task of social science is to unmask and demystify the mechanisms of
power. As he sees the mechanisms of domination as universal, Bourdieu
does not attempt to theorize a specific kind of democratic legitimacy that
would take the form of a democratic political field based partly on public
debate, deliberation and the public sphere and partly on specific mechanisms of power struggle that would contrast with Weber’s charismatic,
legal and traditional rule. Instead, he is concerned with demystifying the
political game, showing how delegation leads to alienation and usurpation, how social domination is everywhere, and how the dominated reproduce their own domination. Politics as the noble activity of organization
Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Politics: An Interpretation
215
and regulation of human communities turns into social domination. In
Bourdieu’s theory of the political field, politics is a game. In this simplification, the public domain is studied one-sidedly as an area where various
private interests, masquerading as group interests, try to grab the public
interest for themselves, or transform their particular interests into the
public interest. Politics is seen neither in terms of the institutional construction of a public sphere and public instruments that aim at promoting
the general interest and preventing the private use of physical violence to
settle accounts, nor as a process of adjustment to social pressures (Lipset
1962, p. 32). There is no space for constructive politics. Bourdieu’s theory
of politics is very much tied to France and its political structures.
Bourdieu’s model for analyzing delegation, the monopoly of production of political goods and political power as symbolic power owe a great
deal to Weber. So does his conception of politics as a separate life sphere
(Weber 1922, p. 542; Ben-David and Collins 1966, pp. 451–65) or field,
which he developed using linguistic models adopted from Saussure and
Lévi-Strauss (Bourdieu 2000b, pp. 111–125). Political value is Weberian
in the sense that it has a fiduciary value that is dependent on the legitimacy attributed to a person, organization, or idea, and Saussurean in the
sense that it is relational value. But Karl Marx’s (and Louis Althusser’s)
influence is also apparent. Apart from Bourdieu’s analysis of political
fetishism, which duplicates in another semantic register Marx’s analysis of
fetishism and merchandise circulation (Marx 1985, p. 72), and his presentation of social value in terms of modes of production and capital, the
division of society into social classes is the ultimate explanatory device by
which Bourdieu analyzes the political. Class struggle in the social field
takes a sublimated form in the political field (Bourdieu 1991, p. 182).
Social classes structure the social field, a kind of superfield that is present in various forms in other spheres of social activity, including politics.
The social field and the political field are united by a preestablished qualitative harmony consisting of structural homologies. This harmony
enables agents operating in different fields to find common interests tied
to their relative positions in these fields. Thus, for instance, those dominated in the field of power, the intellectuals, can, in certain historical
circumstances, find common interests with those dominated in the social
field, the working classes.
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In many ways, Bourdieu’s pessimistic analysis of politics is reminiscent
of Plato’s critique of the Sophists. Politics is the realm of the arbitrary and
the symbolic; it is deceit and cannot be the realm of the true and the
beautiful. Perhaps for this reason he saw himself until the end as a critical
intellectual, as a man of science among the people, at a distance from the
political establishment. Bourdieu’s underlying ideal model of the political
seems to be based on direct democracy in a polis composed of critical
individuals, without parties or political organizations. In his mind, delegation of power and political representation logically leads to usurpation
and manipulation, not to real democracy.
Note
1. For discussions of some aspects of Bourdieu’s theory of politics, notably
his theory of fields, cf. Caro (1980); Bon and Schemeil (1980); Fritsch
(2000, pp. 7–31); Addi (2000) and Swartz (2013).
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14
The Bourdieu Affair
In 1998, France was talking about the Bourdieu affair (Contat 1998),
following the Dreyfus affair of the end of the previous century. Then the
Jewish officer Dreyfus was wrongly accused of treason. The people and
the educated classes were divided into Dreyfus supporters and opponents.
The most famous defender of Dreyfus was the writer Emile Zola.
Supporters of the Republic represented ideologically progressive forces in
French society. Opponents, in turn, were backed by extensive conservative forces, including the Catholic Church. In a sense, Pierre Bourdieu
continued this classical intellectual tradition, which feeds from all kinds
of crises and upheavals (Bensaïd and Corcuff 1998). In the name of
morality, he rose to defend those who suffered injustice. As Jean-Paul
Sartre in his time, this romantic knight has to be as independent of all
worldly ties as possible, so that he can fill, unobstructed, his mission.
Following this cultural model, he has to refuse the Nobel literature prize
or membership of the French Academy, as Sartre did. He has to risk his
life to protect the oppressed, figuratively speaking of course. In the
Bourdieu affair, the sufferers of injustice were the unemployed and part-­
time workers, to quote Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. The opponents were
the neoliberal market ideologists, historical successors to the form of
© The Author(s) 2018
N. Kauppi, Toward a Reflexive Political Sociology of the European Union,
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71002-0_14
219
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N. Kauppi
capitalism Zola had already dissected in his book on the stock exchange,
Avarice (greed), as well as audio-visual communication tools, which
Bourdieu and others accused of mediocrity (see Chap. 13). In the history
of French intellectuals, opponents have been the nobility, Catholics, anti-­
Semitics, colonialists and the middle class, to name a few. As in the cases
of Zola and Sartre, Bourdieu’s message is universal, even though the
problems selected, the form of their presentation and the style of debate
are French: climate change is not high on the list, neither are gender or
ethnicity; philosophers are treated as equals or even superior to economic
experts, and there is no room for compromise.
For several years, Bourdieu and his collaborators were engaged in a war
against various dogmas by publishing booklets on hot topics such as the
neoliberal economy, social misery and media rights. Journalist Serge
Halimi from Le Monde diplomatique published in 1997 Les nouveaux
chiens de garde (The new guard dogs), a retake of the book by Julien Benda
Les chiens de garde (the guard dogs) published in 1927. The historical connection is of course not a coincidence. Both Benda’s and Halimi’s works
argued that the intelligentsia has betrayed its real mission, the defense of
truth. Like Halimi’s pamphlet, Bourdieu’s own pamphlets, Sur la télévision
et Contre-feux, have also been not only poison arrows but also commercial
mega successes. In France, as elsewhere, there is nothing more interesting
than the disclosure of the misdemeanors of those in power. It is not an
accident that the power of the press has been the subject of debates from
the late 1700s onward. It is, therefore, much more than about one person
or a book. It is about a culture and a collective psychology.
But what is this force that is not political or financial? It is the power
of the word, which is fueled by publicity and morality. In contrast to
other European countries, where intellectuals often assist political power
(see Chap. 12), in France intellectuals publicly denounce their enemies
and try their best to ruin their reputation and honor. Although Hegel
noted that events occurred in the world twice, the second time as a farce,
in France intellectual issues are not objects of derision. Intellectual stars
represent cultural values that are not directly related to the citizen or to
the business community as in some countries. In France, the intellectual
star radiates charisma and enchants his audience that wants to believe and
follow him. Like a religious prophet, his power depends on the fact that
The Bourdieu Affair
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he is there at the right moment, when the poor are being unfairly treated,
that is in modern terms when the cameras and microphones of the mainstream media are on the spot. Our hero is at the mercy of publicity and
reveals his enemies in the terms set by publicity, even though he—or
anyone else—cannot admit this. In France, eligibility to the post of star
intellectual requires a very specific CV. One has to be already famous and
willing to surrender to the rules of the game set by publicity. One has to
be a man of the pen, preferably a writer.
What kind of a person can fulfill such a role? Already a famous sociologist in France, his charisma radiated in his natural habitat, the Ecole des
Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). I remember when I walked, a
little tense, for the first time on a sunny autumn day in 1986 on Boulevard
Raspail in Paris, to seminar room no. 215. Professor Pierre Bourdieu’s
research seminar was scheduled to start at two. I had come to the scene a
little earlier, to observe the entering participants, sniff the air so to speak,
under pressure, uncertain, attempting to control the situation, I suppose.
I sat down in the back row, even though the room was empty. Young and
old, men and women, French and foreign, began to flow in. The room
filled up quickly, latecomers sat on the blue fitted carpet, as would first-­
year students at the Sorbonne introductory courses. Some placed recorders on the table.
The atmosphere gradually intensified. I had met Bourdieu already privately the previous week, two floors above in his office, to discuss my
PhD studies. The office was modern; the decor was from the 1960s. I
remember that on his desk, in the middle of anonymous paper piles, lay
several volumes of Marcel Proust’s works. He was surprised by my fluent
French and glad that outside France some were interested in his thoughts.
Polite and cordial described him best. My research plan on the Tel Quel
group had interested him (see Kauppi 1994). During the following four
years, participation in his research seminar and regular contact with him
would be the essential elements of my PhD education.
It was already quarter past two. Suddenly I saw some motion at the
door of the seminar room. Speech stopped instantly, as the sounds of the
jungle once the sun has disappeared behind the horizon. In a row, first
came in Monique de Saint Martin and Louis Pinto, Bourdieu’s closest
assistants. The master followed them, took a few swift steps, smiling,
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crouched slightly and glancing shyly around the room from behind the
desk, clutching to his chest the folder he was holding. They sat down.
Lightings flashed. Dead silence followed.
It is hard to imagine the kind of intellectual star power Bourdieu represented. I was, of course, a Bourdieu fan even before I had met him.
Perhaps at that age looking for idols, be they athletic, musical or intellectual, is natural. In his seminar, he did not convert anyone. It goes
without saying that we were all, 20 to 25 people present, sworn fans of
Bourdieu even before we stepped into the seminar room. Especially the
youngest of us, who were working on our PhDs. We resembled a religious
chapel, a sect of a few, which Bourdieu himself had chosen. Bourdieu was
our leader. We were well aware of this and even joked about it: for us,
Bourdieu was dieu (God). We believed what he said, and we trusted him.
Following his teaching irreversibly changed our vision of the world. We
were his loyal followers. We collected and read all his text. We recorded
his seminars and lectures. We began to despise his competitors within the
EHESS and in Paris. Many of us dreamed of being his right hand. But at
the same time, we knew that the moment of rebellion was only a matter
of time. Others in the Parisian university scene considered us as being
different. And we also felt like it: we got a little bit of Bourdieu’s charisma
upon us. For us, it was a privilege to listen to what he had in mind at any
given moment in time. We felt important, as we could tell others what
Bourdieu was currently writing a book about. In our opinion, of course,
we always knew: that was expected from us. It was logical that at the same
time as he was for us to God, to others he was a root of all evil, perhaps
with envy, or as a rebellion against his position of authority. For them,
Bourdieu was the devil.
Against this background, the passion that Bourdieu aroused in France
was not surprising. You could only love or hate him. In an authoritarian
and hierarchical intellectual field, there was no space for anything else,
and rebellion against the ‘father’ was always violent. Each Bourdieusian
had an anti-Bourdieusian pamphlet in her drawer. But Jeannine Verdes-­
Leroux, who had written against her former teacher a violent pamphlet
(Verdès-Leroux 1998), did not triple lock her drawer. She decided to
publish the manuscript, or someone persuaded her to do that. And the
scandal-hungry publishers seized the opportunity to pull France’s leading
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intellectual into the mud. But, as Frédéric Pagès, literary critic in the
satirical magazine Le canard enchaîné wrote, instead of knocking Bourdieu
out, she knocked herself out (Pagès 1998). By revealing him she revealed
herself: a perfect Catch-22 situation.
What did Bourdieu’s enemies accuse him of exactly? He was accused of
having the courage to take a stand. That he had moved from the dusty
scholar’s cell to the political arena. Well, what of it? It would not have
mattered had Bourdieu not been France’s leading intellectual at that time.
As a result, heads may have fallen on the left and on the right. Already in
the 1960s, Bourdieu had openly supported the rebellious students.
Throughout his career, he had been a kind of independent leftist. In the
1980s, he stood next to Michel Rocard’s Parti Socialiste Unifié, which
represented a kind of modern leftism. In the 1981 presidential election in
which the principal candidates were the already aging Valéry Giscard
d’Estaing and the Socialist challenger Francois Mitterrand, Bourdieu surprisingly gave his support to the populist comedian Coluche. Many saw
this as an omen for what was coming. In the 1990s, he increasingly abandoned the academic habitus and started wearing a populist and rebellious
intellectual armor. From a representative of science, he had become a
terrier-like pamphlet writer. In 1995, he stood next to the striking unemployed railway men at the Lyon train station in Paris. Cameras and
microphones were there, commented laconically an editor of the German
magazine Die Zeit who was present at the event (Hénard 1998). Some
journalists (Duhamel 1998; Chemin 1998) saw common strategic interests between Bourdieu and Arlette Laguiller, leader of the Trotskyist party
Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ struggle), interests related to a common mentality of rebellion against the Establishment.
These and other rumors once again revived the dream on a rebellious
left wing, a left of the left. Other observers, such as an Italian Corriere
della Sera journalist (Munzi 1998) saw the arrangement Bourdieu maintained between the insurgency and the Establishment as old fashioned.
Both the left and the right feared that he would create his own candidate
list for the 1999 European Parliament elections, following the example of
the intellectual list lead by philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy and celebrity
heart surgeon Léon Swartzenberg in 1994. This Bourdieu-led intellectual
list could have taken votes from ‘real’ parties especially on the left.
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Bourdieu’s actions were not free of paradoxes. In 1996, he founded the
‘non-profit’ publishing house Raisons d’agir, which began to publish
intellectual works intended for the masses, with great success. In France,
this genre that unites highbrow work with popular success was doing
well. Bourdieu took part in a television program in which he railed television. He criticized the intelligentsia for being unintellectual and the
media for its mediocrity. In public, his personality was Janus faced: knight
intellectual and stuntman. No risk was too big for him; he always came
up with new and daring stunts. He was an old war horse, used to absorbing hits and distributing them, idealist and cynical simultaneously. Vita
brevis without hits. In accordance with this temperament, he won his
supporters confidence and the secret admiration of his opponents.
Intellectual success and an exasperation with the immorality of politics
led to a gigantic media success. In this situation, it was natural that
Bourdieu and the intelligentsia he represented would seek new allies,
such as the new political movements and various ‘forgotten’ groups, as
well as the unpolitical left wing.
At the turn of the millennium, in France insurgency had replaced the
political, revealing social ills but without seeking to correct them. The
renovation of society was left to the politicians and the financial elite,
whose credibility had been further diminished by scandals and denunciations. Is this a déjà vu?
Bourdieu sought to represent a more openly and consciously ‘European’
intellectual culture, looking for a global mission as an alternative to neoliberalism and Communism. With Jürgen Habermas in Germany, he
backed the creation of a Europewide network of intellectuals to defend
the principles of justice and freedom. However, Habermas and Anthony
Giddens in England represented a more pragmatic option, where abstract
problems should be solved through concrete proposals for cooperation
with political decision makers. Political and intellectual-cultural differences rose to the surface on the old Continent (see Chap. 6 for a discussion). Today these two European intellectual cultures might present more
an opportunity than a risk. Efforts should be made to create a new
European intellectual culture, one that brings up problems and seeks to
provide solutions for them.
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Bourdieu Was National Property
The French sociologist showed how culture served power. The power
holders criticized by Bourdieu, including President of the Republic
Jacques Chirac, expressed their sorrow. ‘Pierre Bourdieu is dead’, wrote
the biggest French newspapers on January 25, 2002. Bourdieu died of
cancer between the night of 23 and 24 January at the Saint Antoine
Hospital in Paris. The news came as a shock, also to his closest collaborators. Since President Francois Mitterrand’s death in 1996, no death
announcement had been printed as the main story on the front page of
the biggest French dailies. Bourdieu had already for some time complained about back pains, and he had canceled his lectures at the Collège
de France. He had had some health problems, but his sudden disappearance surprised everybody. His life became national property.
Everybody seemed to have a need to express their condolences at the
disappearance of the leftist sociologist and philosopher. The rightist president Jacques Chirac, whose harshest critic Bourdieu had been, declared
in an official statement that Bourdieu had shown how the ‘time of the
economy is not the time of culture’. According to Chirac, the famous
philosopher and sociologist understood sociology as an integral part of
political action.
The Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin, whose party Bourdieu had
criticized as hardly as he had criticized the rightist forces, emphasized in
Le Monde Bourdieu’s action ‘against liberal globalization and the cultural
and social destruction it creates’. The German philosopher Jürgen
Habermas compared Bourdieu to Michel Foucault and his attempts to
unite political and intellectual action. The sociologist Alain Touraine, one
of Bourdieu’s main enemies in the French sociological field, wrote in
Libération that referring to Bourdieu is inevitable, in the good and the
bad.
As a person and as a thinker, Bourdieu was a hard fighter. He was convinced of certain things and wondered why the others did not agree with
him. For him they were self-evident. In the world, you had the dominant
and the dominated. Science was on the side of truth and the dominated.
There was no truth without justice. His rooted attitude toward the world
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combined common sense and theoretical sophistication. He was from the
countryside and proud of it. But he had gone through France’s finest
schools and read Plato and Pascal. Having fully internalized the Republican
worldview, he fought against inequality. He was against the bosses and the
political establishment, always on the side of the ‘small people’. Since the
1990s, he took part actively in the so-called social movement on the side
of the unemployed and the groups resisting globalization. In his mind,
real political action could not take place in political parties. It had to be
independent, sucking its strength from civil society. His social theory was
in harmony with these ideas. Its task was to clarify the mechanisms of
social inequality and dominance. In order to study this, he created his
own theory and concepts. The field work in Algeria since the end of the
1950s, in his ‘homeland’ in Béarn in the foothills of the Pyrénées mountains, in Lille and Paris since the beginning of the 1960s, all tended to
answer a general human question, that of inequality. Bourdieu studied
the reproduction of social inequality and the numerous forms of social
dominance. He showed how culture functions as a tool of power.
Bourdieu had one ambition above the others: knowledge and emancipation through knowledge. This belief in the freeing capacity of knowledge is of course classical, Socratic. His reflexive sociology aimed to assist,
following in some ways Freud’s psychoanalysis, an emancipation of social
and psychological constraints through self-analysis.
With Freud self-understanding happened through the detour of the
unconscious world, with Bourdieu through the detour of the social world
that surrounds and constitutes the individual. The ‘truth’ of each one of
us is found in this outside world. The individual is always dislocated.
Social background played a key role in Bourdieu’s thinking. He related
the development of artistic taste and individual talent and genius to the
overall development of society. The individual was always social. Using
this model, he also analyzed himself. With his own work, he fought his
way to the top of the scientific world. But Bourdieu’s way of presenting
himself was modest. He did not want to be called Monsieur le professeur,
like a teacher is usually called in France. His students and colleagues
called him Monsieur Bourdieu.
The day after his death, Bourdieu was also the topic of discussion in
the newspaper kiosk opposite the Collège de France. ‘I saw Bourdieu a
The Bourdieu Affair
227
couple of weeks ago, he crossed the street bent. He was pale and holding
his back’, the kiosk keeper told me. A passerby that came in to buy the
daily newspaper mentioned that his wife’s good friend had worked for
several years with Bourdieu. Many of the letters to the editor section of
Libération were on Bourdieu. Some deplored the narrow scope of his
political activism. Others admired his attempts to wed thinking and
action. In many letters shone the sorrow of loss. Apart from politicians,
scholars and ordinary people, business people also had their say. On the
program La semaine de l’économie on the second channel of French television, the former CEO of the oil company Elf was asked to comment on
Bourdieu’s death. He remarked that in order to be a good manager you
have to understand not only how your subordinates operate but also how
the world operates. And Bourdieu’s work helped us to understand exactly
that.
Nothing Grows at the Foot of a Tall Tree
Traditionally in France students organize in honor of their master a colloquium celebrating her work. Pierre Bourdieu had always resisted that
this type of meeting be organized in his honor. At last he agreed. In July
2001, in the medieval castle of Cérisy-la-salle in Normandy, a couple of
dozen former students from all over the world met. The topic of the
meeting was Le symbolique et le social, and it had been organized by three
Belgian students of Bourdieu. The master came there in person by train
from Paris. He gave a talk, stayed for dinner and overnight, and returned
to Paris the following day.
I had the opportunity to participate in this meeting. I had never seen
him in such a good humor. He was delighted, laughed and joked. As
usual, he was available to chat with everyone after his presentation on
sociological self-analysis. During the pause, we went outside to the castle’s front yard to stretch our legs. After dinner, we gathered in the ­fireplace
room of the second floor of the castle. We talked freely while enjoying a
drink of calvados. The fire blazed in the freezing castle, and Bourdieu
talked with enthusiasm about the joys and sorrows of his work, revealing
of himself more than before. The discussion continued well into the
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N. Kauppi
night. Finally, we all went to the castle’s attic to watch Pierre Carles’s
documentary on Bourdieu entitled La sociologie est un sport de combat.
Did Bourdieu know time was running out? Was that why he had come,
to say goodbye to his students, usually dispersed but now in Cérisy?
He had no intention of retiring. Until the last moment, he was working on his texts and commenting his collaborators’ works. His readers
and admirers will miss his devotion and determination. Our dialog with
him will continue. According to a French saying, nothing grows at the
foot of a tall tree. His Parisian court lived for him and through him. And
it will die with him. Now that this tall tree has fallen, we will wait and see
what will grow in its place. It will take time. The seeds will be sown with
the wind. Without noticing it, his legacy will influence our lives, giving
us reasons to act.
Adieu, Monsieur Bourdieu.
Bibliography
Bensaïd, D., & Corcuff, P. (1998). Le diable et Bourdieu. Libération, 21(10), 6.
Chemin, A. (1998). Pierre Bourdieu devient la référence du ‘mouvement social’.
Le Monde, 8(5), 6.
Contat, M. (1998). Le cas Bourdieu en examen. Le Monde, 28.8., VI.
Duhamel, A. (1998). Arlette ou le remord révolutionnaire. Libération, 5(6), 4.
Hénard, J. (1998). Die absolute Linke. Die Zeit, 26, 2.6. 2.
Kauppi, N. (1994). The Making of an Avant-Garde: Tel Quel. Berlin/New York:
Mouton de Gruýter. Original French 1990.
Munzi, U. (1998). Bourdieu, un eretico che divida la Francia. Corriere della
Sera. 3.9. 31.
Pagès, F. (1998). Bon dieu de Bourdieu! Le canard enchaîné, Septembre 2. 7.
Verdès-Leroux, J. (1998). Le savant et la politique. Essai sur le terrorisme sociologique de Pierre Bourdieu. Paris: Grasset.
15
Toward a Political Theory of the Sublime
Few ‘events’, for lack of a better term, seem to have taken place so unexpectedly and had such a devastating impact on global politics as the fall
of the Soviet Union or the 9/11 attacks. Our understanding of these
events is conditioned by the symbolic categories through which we imagine and represent them. However, the problem is that these events do not
fit our categories of thinking. This is especially clear in the case of the fall
of the Soviet Union. Although the metaphor of the fall enables us to
grasp the religious dimension of the event, the fall of the Soviet Union
was not a ‘fall’ in the strict sense of the term as it is, paradoxically, still
taking place with incalculable political, economic and symbolic effects.
Calling the fall a historical process would miss the mark yet another way,
as it would minimize the sudden impact it had on the individuals living
it and the destabilizing effect it has had on our understanding of politics.
Finally, the impact of collective and cultural factors was such that nobody
saw the fall coming. Or if somebody did, nobody took her seriously. In
the face of these aporias, what can we do? Enter the sublime. The sublime
seems to provide us with a category that is capable of shedding new light
on historical encounters of this type.
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In this chapter, I will present the key points of an esthetic theory of
the sublime, which has so far provided the dominant interpretation of
the political sublime, and follow by developing an alternative theory
of the sublime, which draws on structural constructivism and Taoist
political theory. In contrast to an esthetic theory of the sublime, in a
structural constructivist theory the key to the sublime as a defining
moment of politics can be found not in exceptional and sudden eruptions of violence but in the links between physical events and symbolic structures, a theme undertheorized in Bourdieu’s work.
The Esthetic Theory of the Sublime
In esthetic theory, the sublime is understood as a natural occurrence (an
earthquake, a violent thunderstorm…) or artistic representation (something of exceptional beauty) that produces in the beholder a sense of
overwhelming grandeur or irresistible power, combining fear or terror
with wonder. Inspired by Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schiller developed a
theory of the sublime in two essays: ‘On the Sublime: Toward the Further
Development of Some Kantian Ideas’ (1793), written in an admiring
fashion before the Reign of Terror in France, and ‘On the Sublime’
(1803), in which he elaborated a more critical stance toward terror. The
sublime as an esthetic category provides us with a metaphor that enables
us to come to terms with exceptional and unexpected political events (see
Hinnant 2002, pp. 121–38).
In the first essay, Schiller suggests that when the distance between the
‘frightful object’ and the material security that permits us to believe we
are ‘safe’ is traversed by a representation of the terrifying object in our
imagination, our survival instinct is set in motion. Schiller divides the
sublime moment into three parts: (1) realization of an objective, physical
power, (2) our subjective, physical impotence and (3) our subjective,
moral superiority. These three moments constitute a linear succession
that forms, in our minds, the sublime experience.
According to its protagonists, the advantages of employing the esthetic
concept of the sublime for understanding world events are threefold.
First, the concept enables us to imagine a contradictory process that
Toward a Political Theory of the Sublime
231
mimics birth, the simultaneous ‘end’ and ‘beginning’ of regimes or any
type of relatively stable political structures. Second, by linking the sublime to misfortune and catastrophe, we are able to focus on the physical
violence unleashed by the ‘event’. ‘Events’ of similar power are always
condensed into apocalyptic images of destruction: the explosions after
the planes crashed into the World Trade Center, tanks on the streets of
Moscow bombing the White House or the physical demolition of the
Berlin wall. Third, by bringing esthetic theory into politics, we can concentrate on the forms of representations and their limits, on how we deal
with the inexplicable and the incalculable. An examination of the relationship between representations and events might enable us to bridge
the historical gap between them, a gap that prevents us from ‘expecting
the unexpected’.
However, this esthetic conception of the sublime has several theoretical limitations that prevent its development into a full-fledged political
theory of the sublime. First, the esthetic interpretation of the sublime
grants ontological priority to the physical. It equates real power with
physical power. It forgets that political reality is mostly symbolic reality,
involving representations, images, fears, habits of thinking and so on
(Christiansen et al. 2001, see chapter 14). Second, by emphasizing the
psychological impact a single event has on an isolated witness or viewer,
collective factors such as social networks and conventions are minimized.
Third, this esthetic theory normalizes the powerlessness of the observer
as one of the structural conditions of effective political action. The sublime is sublime precisely because the observer is powerless. Fourth, the
sublime is equated with the irresolvable. The experience of etwas ganz
anderes, something else entirely to paraphrase Kant, points to a single
event that promises universality but is by definition incapable of delivering it because the event itself is beyond the scope of representation.
In line with this heroic, somewhat old-fashioned individualistic scenario, Jean-François Lyotard provides the most impressive modern theory
of the sublime. Lyotard analyzes the sublime as something ‘subjectively
felt by thought as differend’ (Lyotard 1994, p. 31). Esthetic feeling is the
sensation not of a thing or of its representation, but of something quite
different, of a differend that cannot be represented. In Lyotard’s interpretation of Kant’s work, this differend is a supplement, something that
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unites the first and second critiques. Subjective feeling becomes the crucial criterion of the sublime. However, unless what is subjectively felt is
linked to intersubjective and objective processes, the value of subjective
feeling for a political theory of the sublime will be limited.
In short, in esthetic theory the political sublime is defined as the
physically violent and exceptional event as witnessed by an isolated,
decontextualized individual. Exit ordinary political life in which individuals as socialized members of various social groups are capable of
influencing and interpreting events and are involved in more or less
orderly symbolic and physical interaction.
A Political Theory of the Sublime
Rather than an isolated, often apocalyptical event, what is crucial to an
alternative, political theory of the sublime is an understanding of the
deep structures of international relations and world politics, of the longue
durée (Braudel 1986) and the collective construction of symbolic structures and representations that enable us to control others and our environment. The esthetic theory of the sublime reifies a single incident into
a ‘sublime’ event that violently unleashes itself on helpless subjects, transforming itself into an all-encompassing moment that acquires supernatural structuring power. There is no doubt that an incident like the explosion
of the World Trade Center towers is frightening and shocking as such.
But it derives even more political power from the symbolically conditioned phantasmatic terror and intense symbolic threat images it triggers
as well as from the political uses it has subsequently been the object of.
The relevance of an esthetic theory of the sublime is limited as it does
not take into account the relationship between events and historical
contexts.
A political theory of the sublime focuses on the process of sublimation,
that is how various agents and interests transform the ordinary into the
extraordinary or the ontic into the ontological, and how they construct
certain historical events as sublime, the cornerstones of a political order.
The process of sublimation thus takes place before and after the c­ elebrated
historical encounter or, more precisely, its audio-visual objectification.
Toward a Political Theory of the Sublime
233
What advantages does a structural constructivist concept of the political sublime and of the process of sublimation offer to social theory and
the study of international politics? First, and paradoxically, the sublime
historical encounter enables us to highlight the symbolic building blocks
of a political order. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, as the French
say. The fall of the Soviet Union came as a surprise to most of us partly
because of the symbolic status of the Soviet Union as a key building block
of the global political order of the moment. Imagining a world without
the Soviet Union was impossible because it would have contradicted the
collective belief that constitutes symbolic institutions like the Soviet
Union.
The second aspect of the sublime and the process of sublimation that
should be noted is the social construction of the historical event into
powerful visual images following the esthetic register in which the concept of the sublime has developed until now. This factor highlights
another key feature of the social construction of reality and memory, its
embeddedness in the physical world. However, while the visual aspects of
the sublime might enable us to focus on the immediate effects of powerful images on individuals, they may, through their violent impact on our
bodies and senses, also distract us from analysis of the institutional and
symbolic aspects of the sublime. A loud explosion or noise immobilizes
for a few seconds. The physical shock hides the more insidious forces of
power the encounter carries within. Physical violence and shock find
their logical equivalents in the fable of humanity in its infancy, the
omnium bellum contra omnes, where terror produced by humans, not
nature, forms the basis of social interaction.
Third, in a constructivist theory of the political sublime the physical
detachment that the esthetic sublime presupposes is transformed into a
symbolic complicity in the social world: we are always, to varying degrees,
implicated in the process of sublimation. Unlike the case of a thunderstorm (or the works of art) and the terrified individual observing it, there
is no strict separation between object and subject. On the contrary, historical encounters are always individualized to varying degrees and they
receive their social power from the union between the subjective and the
objective. If detachment is impossible and social reality is never just ‘out
there’, the solidity of the phenomenon or incident observed depends on
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N. Kauppi
the resonance it finds in subjective evaluations and perceptions and in
the objective norms and conventions that regulate social interaction.
Because it is internalized, soft power is familiar and therefore legitimate
(for an analysis of internalized patterns of behavior see Kauppi 2000).
Exactly for these reasons, it is the hardest power of all. It makes victory
possible without battle. In the words of Lao Tzu, ‘the softest thing in the
world dashes against and overcomes the hardest’ (Lao-tseu 1980, p. XLIII,
my translation).
A political theory of the sublime has to offer a sophisticated account
of the relationships between the symbolic and the physical. While symbolic reality might not have the same material properties as physical reality, it has very similar effects. Institutional order is not negotiated. Like
physical reality, its materiality is manifest in the fact that it forces itself on
us, without asking for our consent (Douglas 1986). In contrast to physical reality, however, it does not always start and end in a clearly defined
temporal and spatial span. The plasticity of symbolic reality is also evident in the way concepts refer to other concepts in more or less structured semantic universes that do not necessarily have direct links to
physical reality. Fundamentally, symbolic reality forms the matrix
through which physical incidents acquire their religious, economic or
social meanings. This institutional and symbolic reality is then the central aspect of political reality and of a political theory of the sublime, not
a mere appendix to physical events as in an esthetic theory of the sublime. The symbolic performance of the physical events will depend on
factors such as the myriad political strategies and struggles taking place at
a given moment and the political weight of the events as legitimizers/
delegitimizers of the interests behind these strategies and struggles. As
symbolic realities often clash, the symbolic efficiency of events such as
the tanks rolling through the streets of Moscow in August 1991 varies
synchronically and diachronically. If an interpretation reinforces a solidly
established and shared conception, then this interpretation will reinforce
the likelihood of certain actions. Thus, an event can reveal the fragility of
the symbolic order in place and can spur concerted actions from a variety
of agents and groups. Interpretations of the visual events can then differ
significantly. However, with technological advances such as developments in audio-­visual media, classification has become more complex.
Toward a Political Theory of the Sublime
235
The battleground has shifted from first-degree interpretations of the links
between words and physical events to second-degree interpretations of
words and their status in symbolic universes. The protagonists of these
symbolic universes are permanently engaged in multiple classification
struggles over the correct interpretation of reality. Classification struggles
intensify as the unpredictability of reality increases (Weber 1968, especially the parts on religion).
The extraordinary power of a thunderstorm and the extraordinary
power of an event like the appearance of tanks on the streets of Moscow
thus have very different characteristics. In the first case, the sublime refers
to the impact a ‘natural’ event has on an isolated individual. In the second
case, the impact is not psychological but rather social and symbolic. More
than in the first case, we are then talking about power directed at symbolic universes and their constitutive meanings (for a philosophical
account of constitutive rules, see Searle 1995; on symbolic violence, see
Bourdieu 1981).
The political sublime as a founding moment that is retroactively
constructed touches on the social and cultural status of physical events,
conditioning their interpretation and even the actual sequence of events
through the perceptions and (always) retrospective evaluations of the
participants and observers. As such, the physical event has little meaning. The event without the historical circumstances is equivalent to a
word without a context. The meaning of the event will be formed
through the multiple struggles over symbolic classification that will follow the conflicting definitions of the event. In the case of the bombing
of the White House in Moscow or the images of the tanks rolling down
the streets of that city, these incidents might have to be linked to interpretations concerning the state of the political order at the time. For
instance, these events indicated the fragility of the new regime, which
was also visible in the struggle between parliamentary and presidential
authority, embodied by Parliament spokesman Ruslan Khasbulatov
and war hero Aleksandr Rutskoy on the one hand and President Yeltsin
on the other. The transformations under way led to contradictions
between a constitution dating the Soviet times and a new political reality. Perhaps the fall of the Soviet Union was no fall at all. Perhaps it was
just a stumble.
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In Conclusion
The esthetic theory of the sublime prioritizes the Big Bang theory of
politics that automatically attributes to violent physical actions ontological superiority and performative efficiency compared to the impersonal
and, partly for that reason, ‘weak’ routines of the ontic Lebenswelt.
Physical rather than symbolic, exceptional rather than ordinary, these
events are seen as causes rather than effects. This prevents us from linking
the physical event to the symbolic universes through which they make
sense to us (or front- and backstage, see Goffman 2005). No wonder
significant political transformation is seen as involving disproportionate
violence rather than gradual, peaceful change. While politics will never
be 100 percent nonviolent, in Western democracies it is mostly about the
socially controlled symbolic competition for power instead of the indiscriminate use of violence (Elias 1982, pp. 229–336). A political theory of
the sublime has to examine the complex and historically evolving interaction between the physical and the symbolic, not just one without the
other.
Bibliography
Bourdieu, P. (1981). Le sens pratique. Paris: Minuit.
Braudel, F. (1986). The Identity of France I. New York: Harper and Row.
Christiansen, T., Jørgensen, K. E., & Wiener, A. (Eds.). (2001). The Social
Construction of Europe. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Douglas, M. (1986). How Institutions Think. Syracuse: Syracuse University
Press.
Elias, N. (1982). Power and Civility. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Goffman, E. (2005). Interaction Ritual. New Jersey: Transaction.
Hinnant, C. H. (2002). Schiller and the Political Sublime: Two Perspectives.
Criticism, 44, 121–138.
Kauppi, N. (2000). The Politics of Embodiment: Habits, Power, and Pierre
Bourdieu’s Theory. Frankfurt/New York: Peter Lang.
Lao-tseu. (1980). Philosophes taoïstes. Lao-tseu, Tchouang-tseu, Lie-tseu. Paris:
Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.
Toward a Political Theory of the Sublime
237
Lyotard, J.-F. (1994). Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
Searle, J. (1995). The Construction of Social Reality. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Weber, M. (1968/1972). Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Epilogue: Tinkering with the Future
of the EU
For Pierre Bourdieu, European integration mainly represented a stage in
the development of neoliberalism (cf. for instance Bourdieu 1999b).
Although this position led him to develop several critical studies on contemporary capitalism, it prevented him from delving into the complex
social laboratory of the European Union. While it is true that the requirements of global financial and economic forces have a significant impact
on the European Union, and the EU aims at removing barriers to the free
movement of goods, individuals and capital, European integration is also
a unique experiment in the creation of supranational political and social
structures that have had a significant impact on domestic, including
French politics.
In contrast to some scholars’ interpretations of Bourdieu that emphasize the structural, static aspects of politics in the EU, a focus on the
action-oriented elements of political power is in many ways more productive. A static ‘snapshot’ as a form of objectification misses the dynamics, texture and depth of EU politics and also legitimizes indirectly the
constellation of power it objectifies. It also runs the risk of presenting its
retrospective scholarly rationalization as the only, ‘scientific’ representation of reality. An alternative is to explore European politics as a complex
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Epilogue: Tinkering with the Future of the EU
web of social action. In this framework, the social actor is fundamentally
a bricoleur with a more- or less-developed, practical sense of the political,
or academic, game. Knowledge, experience and the capacity to learn are
key assets in evolving institutional and social contexts like the EU. The
image of the politician as bricoleur is especially appropriate in the EU
context, which offers a different environment for political action than
does national politics. It is a major site where politicians, academics,
intellectuals and journalists can convert a variety of national resources
into European or transnational resources. A political sociology approach
like structural constructivism aims to reconstruct these political strategies
and is particularly useful for understanding the often contradictory logics
of European integration. It is impossible to know what the EU will look
like in 50 years as it will certainly have changed from its current form. It
is a unique experiment in world history and, to paraphrase Tocqueville
(2000), a new political science will be needed for a world altogether new.
An adequate contextual analysis of these processes requires going
beyond the limits of the fields, to explore interfield dynamics. In my
work (see for instance Kauppi 2005; Kauppi and Erkkilä 2011), I have
studied the links between various scalar levels—the national, the European
and the global—as historically evolving positional spaces where politicians create new resources. The fields in question are so-called secondary
fields, involving the accumulation of specialized, secondary resources like
European legislative resources or European academic capital. In other
words, their accumulation is limited to specific fields of action. In contrast, the usage of primary resources, such as some types of economic
resources, are not limited to one field of activity. The advantages of this
approach compared to functionalism or intergovernmentalism are that
the scholar does not have to choose between a state-centric or supranational visions of European Union politics or, more broadly, between
rationality and identity. Individuals are neither totally integrated into a
single institution nor totally independent of it, as Chap. 2 suggests.
Analyzing the EU as an object of social science poses considerable
challenges. The greatest one stems from its expanding character. It is a
work in progress, a political field that is at once expanding and acquiring
more scope, more structured at the center than in the periphery. The
center includes, for instance, the European supranational bureaucracy,
Epilogue: Tinkering with the Future of the EU
241
European agencies and key policy areas like monetary policy, and the
periphery, less-integrated areas and policies like tax policy. EU integration has advanced to the level at which it is today because the evolving
European political field has been built without an overall master plan.
This does not mean there has not been any direction of course. Overall,
the situational power strategies of established political and economic
groups at the national and European levels as well as in emerging centers,
such as the European Parliament, and by European public policies, such
as on higher education and research, have determined the direction integration has taken. Current research on the EU presents a second challenge. Characterizing European integration as an initially nonpolitical
project that has become politicized since the 1980s as the current doxa in
European studies does (see for instance Zürn 2013) is misleading.
European integration has been an eminently political project from the
beginning (Kauppi et al. 2016). A related difficulty in the study of
European politics is the lack of interconnection among disciplines. There
is a political science of EU integration, a sociology of EU integration, an
economics of EU integration and so on. Crucial points of intersection,
for instance the importance of political interests behind European economic integration, remain underexplored.
Political considerations render theorizing EU integration difficult.
Established political interests, concerned about protecting their political
and economic positions, have stifled the open and general politicization
of European integration and the political struggles over its forms and
goals. Less democracy has meant less public discussion and involvement.
Consequently, European citizens, the lifeblood of the European polity,
have been more or less excluded from the process of European integration. The result of the tension between politicization and depolitization
that has defined European integration is that democratic political debate
and struggles have been confined to the national level, reinforcing existing nationalistic ideologies on both the left and right, precisely what
European integration was to prevent from happening ever again.
Alternatives exist of course. Defending and developing an inclusive
European democracy and parliamentary institutions might be one way
forward (see Piketty 2016). Habermas’s ideas point that way as do some
work in conceptual history (Palonen 2012; Wiesner 2014) and political
242
Epilogue: Tinkering with the Future of the EU
sociology (Kauppi 2005; Vauchez 2014). Instead of backing established
nation-state powers, one could develop the idea of the EU as a project of
peace, which has until now been an undeniable success, rather than an
enterprise focused on traditional territorial control and state sovereignty
(Maier 2002). With the growing popularity of political parties like the
Front National, the main danger still is that Europe would, following
ingrained habits, reproduce past mistakes and be swallowed up in the
black hole of extremist ideology.
The lack of a credible political blueprint influences the ways the EU is
publicly talked about. The EU does not fit the traditional political topoi,
or with what citizens know about politics. EU integration does not resonate with the perceptions and representations citizens and scholars alike
have of politics. EU’s lack of political legitimacy stems to a certain extent
from this categorization problem. To ordinary citizens, the EU literally
does not make sense: it is like political science fiction. This is the key to
understanding why studying the EU from a social science perspective is
so difficult. In some ways, the EU as an ideal resembles utopian futures
like the universe of Star Trek, a republican institutional setup that contrasts with antiquated tribal, or national, structures. The Star Trek universe conveys ideals of progress, democracy, and morality. These ideals
jibe with the perceptions many EU leaders and European civil servants
have of the EU as a normative power or a Zivilmacht, civilian power.
European regional integration has fundamentally been a political and
intellectual coproduction. Neofunctionalism, intergovernmentalism and
multilevel governance followed one another as scientific rationalizations
and legitimations of evolving power politics. Theorized successfully by
scholars like Ernst Haas with concepts like spillover that were drawn
from economic theory, neofunctionalism worked well until 1966, when
French president Charles de Gaulle decided European integration was
not supposed to work like that, paving the way for another retrospective
rationalization, Stanley Hoffman’s intergovernmentalism (Hoffmann
1966). Through a kind of Verfremdung or ostranenie effect—the ‘making
strange’ theorized by the Russian formalists—this mode of integration
has highlighted the unique nature of the EU, showing how Europe was
different from the nation-state. Nevertheless, since the beginning, a contrasting perspective has also emerged, that focuses on making similar, or
Epilogue: Tinkering with the Future of the EU
243
reducing, new political processes into something already known such as a
nation-state, a federal state or another political order. It is the coexistence
of making strange and making familiar that characterizes the EU is today.
The alternatives seem to be either to repeat what has been said before and
thereby reproduce at a higher level, the European level, the nation-state
template and the mistakes of the past (nationalism), or to reinforce the
EU’s camouflage exercise of depoliticization and the incremental steps
that go with it, thereby legitimizing the kind of ‘non-political politics’
that we have seen until now. Academic theorizing thus swings between
incremental empirics on the one hand and nation-state modeling on the
other hand.
In the 2000s, political scientist Ian Manners’s formulation of ‘normative power Europe’ became an example of an academic concept that has
had an impact outside of the walls of academe (Manners 2002). Picked
up by European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, himself a
former professor of international relations, it resonated with the image he
had of the EU as a political organization. Several, failed attempts to
openly politicize the EU followed. The initiative on transparency was an
attempt to make the EU Commission more democratic. Vice president
Margot Wallström was in charge of institutional reform, which failed
partly because of the heterogeneous sources of power in the EU as Chap. 5
illustrates. The Commission was not able to muster the required support
from member-states to push through these reforms. The result was that
the Commission just came back to its default modus operandi.
Politicians, civil servants and academics have mixed nation-state and
science fiction images and topoi. It is not surprising that European
Commissioners have become or want to be Captain Kirks of a unique
institutional setup that has acquired the paraphernalia of the nation-­
state: the flag, the anthem, a failed constitution, even a kind of Mr.
Europe called for by Henry Kissinger, although if asked today he probably would be disappointed in the outcome. With the (failed) constitutional project for Europe, former French president Giscard d’Estaing
smelled early on the aroma of Europa and already saw himself as the
George Washington of a new political unit that he called ‘United Europe’
(Europe unie). All this paradoxically confirms that the EU represents the
highest stage in the development of the European nation-state.
244
Epilogue: Tinkering with the Future of the EU
Star Trek’s motto was ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before’—at
supersonic speed. In the trailer, the spaceship disappears into infinity. It
is not an accident that both Star Trek and the EU are set in postapocalyptic periods, at the end of the twenty-third century and in the second part
of the twentieth century. Both involve attempts to escape a disastrous
past. Extreme nationalism, the motor behind two devastating World
Wars, represents the point from which European integration took off, to
a point of no return. By presenting European integration as a necessity,
the protagonists of European integration were able to distance their creation from the European nation-state and its political ideologies. In reality, European integration has of course involved major political decisions
from the beginning. For this reason, on closer inspection, instead of a
‘political UFO’ (unidentified flying object), to use Jacques Delors’s
description, the EU today looks more like a political UFO that leading
political entrepreneurs and academics have successfully disguised as an
‘apolitical’ UFO. Much of its symbolic influence stems from this successful exercise in camouflage. Titles like Commissioner and High Authority,
which are relatively politically unremarkable, were a part of this strategy.
It was hoped European integration would enable Europe to leave
behind its disastrous past. Clearly this has worked only partially. Today
most agree that the EU is in dire need of renovation. European integration textbooks give us a standard diagnosis based on established
approaches. These miss something fundamental: the idiosyncratic, eclectic, experimental, contingent, unclassifiable and even baroque character
of this political construction. It was built by using whatever was at hand.
European integration has involved little planning and a lot of bricolage.
From the point of view of the actors involved, it has required pragmatic,
short-term adaptation, tinkering on the spot—as well as longer-term
political and academic strategies.
The EU polity as we know it today is made up of heterogeneous bits
and pieces that do not necessarily fit together. But they happened to be
available at particular points in time for certain dominant groups in specific power configurations to appropriate specific problems. In hindsight,
the political bricolage approach to European integration has not only left
nationalism intact, it has even strengthened it. The political price to pay
for a lack democratic debate has been high. The undercurrents of
Epilogue: Tinkering with the Future of the EU
245
European politics—nationalism and political extremism—have grown
stronger. Established interests have furthered European democratic self-­
governance and citizen activism only when they felt these to be politically
necessary. And even then, these ‘democratic developments’ have taken
ersatz forms. What is known as ‘European civil society’ is a sad and even
comical example of this.
Aristotle famously stated that politics is a craft. It is also a productive
activity that creates useful objects such as social conventions, practices
and institutions, as well as the art of the impossible, to paraphrase Max
Weber. The positive productivity that can result from questioning established forms of power needs to be furthered. In this process, scholars have
a key role to play. Politicians are not necessarily the ones who will come
up with revolutionary new ideas that challenge established practices.
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Index1
A
Alienation, xviii, xx, 201, 214
Aquinas, Thomas, xvii, 201
Association pour la taxation des
transactions financières et pour
l’aide citoyenne (ATTAC),
127
191–195, 197–216, 219–228,
230, 235, 239
Bricolage, xxii
See also Lévi-Strauss, Claude;
Practices
C
B
Bank of Finland, 110, 113
Barroso, José Manuel, 90, 99, 113,
165, 166, 171, 172, 174, 243
Benda, Julien, 220
Boltanski, Luc, xv
Bourdieu, Pierre, xiv–xx, xxii–xxiv, 4,
6, 21n1, 29, 35, 37, 50, 55,
56, 64, 71–73, 122, 123, 158,
170, 173, 180–186, 188,
1
Capital
economic, 206, 213
political, xviii, xix, 206, 208, 210,
211
symbolic, xviii, 95, 206, 210, 211,
213
See also European resources;
Executive networks; Resources
Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique (CNRS), 134, 137,
138, 141, 142, 167
Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.
© The Author(s) 2018
N. Kauppi, Toward a Reflexive Political Sociology of the European Union,
Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71002-0
265
266
Index
Checkel, Jeffrey T., 30, 33–35, 38, 42
Chirac, Jacques, 96, 225
Civic culture, xvii
Civil society
European, 13, 80, 245
national, 127
CNRS, see Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique
Collège de France, 225, 226
Coluche, 223
Constructivism
social, 3, 32, 49, 50, 53, 64
structural, xiv–xv, xx, xxii, 4,
49–51, 53, 54, 58, 60, 64,
72–74, 194, 230, 233, 240
Council of Europe, 17, 37, 59, 63,
78, 83, 91, 99, 102, 114
D
Delegation, see Alienation;
Representation
Delors, Jacques, 79, 244
Democratic deficit, 20, 89, 96
Democratic politics, xx, 123, 124,
170, 171, 201, 212, 214, 241
Depoliticization, see Politicisation;
Politification
Differentiation, xiii, 40, 49, 52, 58,
64, 76, 78, 83, 85, 107–115
Domination, xvi, xvii, xix, xx, xxiii,
11, 14, 20, 30, 51, 56, 151,
165, 170, 197–205, 212, 214,
215
Draghi, Mario, 113
Dreyfus, Alfred, 94, 121, 219
Duclos, Pierre, xxi
Durkheim, Emile, xviii, 55, 197,
202, 203, 212
E
Ecole des hautes études en sciences
sociales (EHESS), 221, 222
Ecole nationale d’administration
(ENA), 84, 208
Elections
European, xxi, 11, 13, 16, 18, 59,
60, 63, 76, 78–80, 83, 114,
128, 223
national, 11, 13, 54, 59, 76, 78,
114
See also Second-order elections
European Bank for Reconstruction
and Development (EBRD),
110, 113
European Central Bank (ECB), 57,
75, 110, 111, 113, 115, 126,
166
European Commission (EC), xxi,
xxiii, 6, 9, 13, 17, 20, 21, 26,
36, 49, 59, 63, 75, 78, 81, 83,
84, 89, 90, 102, 113–115, 145,
149, 166, 167, 171, 172, 243
European Commissioners, 7, 16, 61,
243
European Council, 59, 63
European Council of Ministers, 63,
83, 84
European integration
theories, xxi, xxii, 103, 108
See also European political field
Europeanization, 62
European parliament (EP), see
Elections; Member of the
European Parliament; Second-­
order elections
European political field
main cleavages, 20
structuration, xix, 54, 85
Index
European Research Council (ERC),
111
European resources, 6, 9, 13, 15, 37,
59, 62, 64, 77, 78, 82, 85,
114, 115
European Science Foundation (ESF),
111, 141, 153, 157
Executive networks, 20, 89
F
Federalism, 79, 114, 243
Field theory, xviii, 206
See also Journalistic field; Life-­
sphere; Political field
Foucault, Michel, xv, xvi, 28, 120,
123, 158, 165, 173, 174, 203,
225
Fouillée, Alfred, xvii, 120
Front National (FN), 13, 60, 76, 77,
79, 80, 114, 242
G
Giddens, Anthony, 35, 123–125,
224
Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry, 223
Globalization
and European integration, 12, 123
neoliberalism, 123, 132
Goldman Sachs, 113, 115
Gramsci, Antonio, 210
Grandes écoles, 134
Habitus
civic culture, xvii
Halimi, Serge, 220
Higher education, see Ranking
I
Identity, 3, 7, 15, 31–33, 35,
41, 50, 84, 95, 98, 131–146,
240
Institutionalisation, see Structuration
Integration
bricolage, xxii, 244
differentiation, 49, 58, 64, 113
European, xix, xxi, xxii, 3, 4,
12, 17, 25, 49, 51, 52,
57–60, 64, 71, 75, 78–81,
100, 103, 107, 108, 111,
114, 115, 123, 126,
239–242, 244
Intellectuals
critical, 72, 121, 124, 125, 173,
216
European, 95, 96, 119–129, 220,
224
functional, xxiii, 121, 123–125
Intergovernmentalism, xxii, 11, 240,
242
J
Jospin, Lionel, 225
Journalistic field, 193, 194
Juncker, Jean-Claude, 172, 173
H
Habermas, Jürgen, 91, 92, 94–96,
100, 104, 111, 121, 123, 127,
129, 212, 224, 225, 241
267
K
Kant, Immanuel, xxiv, 111, 132,
154, 162, 170, 230, 231
268
Index
L
O
Laguiller, Arlette, 18, 223
Le Pen, Jean-Marie, 77, 79, 114
Le Pen, Marine, 77
Legislative networks, 20
Legitimacy
executive and legislative, 16, 19
political, 90, 91, 102, 127, 242
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, xv, xxii, 207,
215
Lévy, Bernard-Henri, 223
Life-sphere, see Field theory; Weber,
Max
Lilla, Mark, 119
Linklater, Andrew, 53
Lutte ouvrière (LO), 223
Lyotard, Jean-Francois, 231
Open method of coordination
(OMC), see Integration
M
Marx, Karl, xvii, xix, 56, 72, 151,
180–182, 185, 197, 214, 215
Mauss, Marcel, 52
Max Planck Society, 167
Member of the European Parliament
(MEP)
social characteristics, 61
Michels, Robert, 197, 202, 209,
214
Mitterrand, Francois, 40, 59, 79,
122, 223, 225
Monde, Le, 78, 109, 122, 220, 225
N
National Assembly (Assemblée
nationale), see Elections
Neoliberalism, 132, 133, 138,
143–145, 224, 239
P
Parliament
European, xiii, xxi, 4–7, 9, 11,
13–21, 26, 33, 34, 36, 37, 50,
54, 58–64, 69, 75–85, 91,
98–100, 102, 107, 110,
112–115, 223, 241
national, 20, 37, 54, 83, 84, 99,
114, 172
Parti communiste francais (PCF), 14,
18, 209
Parti socialiste (PS), 59, 79, 223
Political culture, xvii, 15, 21, 127, 198
Political field
European, 6, 9, 10, 15, 19, 20,
51, 241
national, 6, 13, 15, 18, 20, 113,
213
Political power, see Resources
Political representation
delegation, 201, 216
See also Alienation
Political science-fiction
and European integration, 242
Political strategies, 14, 15, 54, 76,
77, 113, 211, 234, 240
Politicization, see Depoliticisation,
Politification
Politification, xxi
Power-idea, xvii, 120, 128, 204
Practices, see Bricolage
Public sphere, 91, 92, 95, 120, 121,
125–129, 212, 214, 215
Puchala, Donald J., 53
Index
R
Ranking, see Shanghai ranking;
Symbolic resource; Times
Higher Education
Representation, xvii, 13, 17–19, 80,
153, 180, 182, 183, 188, 191,
198, 201, 211, 216, 230–232,
239, 242
Resources, 8
cultural, 8, 13, 19, 209
economic, 8, 13, 198, 240
educational, 8, 199
European and national, 6, 138, 240
intellectual, xiii, 37, 94, 240
linguistic, 156
physical (see Sublime)
political, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16,
19, 21, 59, 82, 114, 171, 172,
174, 209, 210
social, 8, 60, 62, 69, 72, 76, 78,
83, 85, 89, 94, 115, 162, 206,
208, 213
transnational, 240
Rocard, Michel, 223
269
Social capital, see Resources
Social class, xvii, 73, 198, 199, 204,
211, 215
Social movements, 14, 127, 226
Structural homology, 215
Structuration, xix, 54, 69, 70,
72–74, 76, 85, 93, 194
Sublime, xxiv, 229–236
Symbolic, xv–xix, xxiv, 8–12, 18, 21,
36, 38, 43, 51, 52, 54, 56, 59,
69, 74, 80, 84, 90, 91, 93, 94,
96, 125, 140, 145, 149–153,
157–160, 165, 166, 182–185,
188, 191, 194, 195, 198,
201–205, 207, 208, 212,
214–216, 229–236
Symbolic resource, 8
T
Times Higher Education (THE), 136
Touraine, Alain, 225
V
S
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 123, 173, 219, 220
Saussure, Ferdinand de, xv, xix, 207,
215
Schiller, Friedrich, 230
Schimmelfennig, Frank, 30–33, 39,
40, 53, 73
Second-order elections, see European
Parliament
Self-fulfilling prophecy, 150, 161
Shanghai ranking, see Self-fulfilling
prophecy; Times Higher
Education
Voting, 8, 128
W
Waever, Ole, 53
Weber, Max, xvi, xix, xx, xxii, xxiii,
5, 37, 58, 72, 112, 113, 159,
160, 165, 168, 169, 172, 194,
198, 205, 207, 208, 210, 213,
214, 245
Z
Zola, Emile, 219, 220