Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology

 —David L. Swartz, Department of Sociology, Boston University, USA

—Wolfgang Merkel, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany

This book researches the role that interest groups play in new modes of EU governance, with a specific focus on the role of interest representation in experimentalist governance frameworks. The research asks how lobbying in the legislative process contributes to the governance framework and its institutional arrangements and subsequently asks how the relevant interest groups participate in policy implementation – in which broad policy goals are concretised.  The research is based on four in-depth case studies: the Industrial Emissions Directive, the General Data Protection Regulation, the Combating Child Abuse Directive, and the Institutions for Occupational Retirement Provision Directive. Of special interest in these cases are the balance between types of interest groups (most notably business and NGOs) in policy formulation and implementation, and the changing dynamics between interest groups and public policy-makers in such ‘horizontal’ governance. The book’s findings are required reading for all those concerned with effective and democratic policy-making in the EU.

This volume investigates the reasons behind voter turnout inequalities in contemporary Europe. It looks at the socioeconomic factors that can inhibit electoral participation at the individual level, and how these factors interact with the institutional constraints regulating access to the electoral arena, and considering the changes affecting the class system and occupational opportunities. The volume also reflects on the long-term effects of the 2008 Great Recession on the stability of democracy and the individual lives of voters, who are often deprived of institutional representation and left with the choice between anti-system protest and disengagement from politics.

This book offers the first comparative study of far-right messaging and organizing efforts at the workplace level as well as responses by established trade unions, encompassing six European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland). Drawing on semi-structured interviews with workers and trade union actors with a focus on the automobile industry, the volume develops a classification of far-right strategies and trade union counter-strategies in comparative perspective. Based on a research project in cooperation with trade unions, the book is situated at the interface of comparative politics, industrial sociology, political economy, and political sociology.

This book deals with the role of expertise and public participation in modern governance. It explores the relationship, tensions and compatibility of these increasingly important and partly conflicting sources of legitimacy and authority. By zooming in on the coordinated procedures of environmental policy-making in European consensus systems and by interconnecting theories of democracy, knowledge and science, organisation and decision-making, the author develops institutional solutions to the tensions between epistemic and democratic demands on public policy-making. 

Departing from the idea that political controversies are embedded in the very framework of European integration, this volume focuses on the relationship between politicisation and European democracy. The contributors to this edited volume trace the various ways of understanding ‘politicisation’ before and beyond the 2019 European elections. The aim is to offer constructive reinterpretations of the concept for further research in the field. Encompassing different approaches, the book shows a plurality of perspectives and provides innovative analytical tools to make sense of the phenomenon of politicisation in the EU context.

Assuming that EU politicisation can be seen both as vice and virtue depending on the way in which it takes place, the authors analyse under what conditions it has a positive or negative influence over European democracy. Emphasising that scholars ought to be aware of the normative assumptions underlying the conceptualisation of politicisation, the book illustrates how many of the features in European politics that were intensified during the Covid-19 pandemic were already present earlier.

Tracing the Politicisation of the EU will be of interest to students and scholars in EU Studies, Comparative Politics, Media and Communication, Political Theory and Political Sociology.

This open access book is the product of three years of academic research that has been carried out in the EU-funded Jean Monnet Network on “Post-Truth Politics, Nationalism and the Delegitimation of European Integration” since 2019. Drawing on the multidisciplinary expertise of the network’s members, the book explores the impact of the phenomenon of post-truth politics on European integration and the European Union. It places particular emphasis on how post-truth politics has played out in the public sphere and asks what impact the phenomenon has had on public deliberation, but reflects also on its implications for democracy in a wider sense. This book is primarily written for audiences with an interest in politics and policy making, including academics, policy makers and civil-society actors. Thanks to its accessible style, the book should however also be an asset to wider audiences.

This book provides an extensive analysis and discussion of the transnational mobilization of citizens and youth, alongside the production of creative, imaginative, and constructive solutions to the European crisis. The volume provides a variety of interdisciplinary analyses, as well as a series of perspectives on populism that have not been addressed extensively, including an examination of left-wing populism, the constituent power dimension of populism, and transnational manifestations of populism, contributing to debates on political science, political sociology, social movements studies, and political and constitutional theory. 

This book provides the first systematic and comparative analysis of the intersections of populism and science in Europe, from the perspective of political sociology.

Populism is the object of rich scholarly debate over its definition and the best way to approach its study. But until now, little attention has been paid to the relationships between populism and science. Recently, the Covid-19 crisis has exposed the contradictions in this relationship, and this book combines an analysis of the theoretical aspects of the relationship between populism and science with rigorous empirical research.

The book will be of interest to scholars and students of a number of social science disciplines, including political sociology, political science and political psychology.

This is an open access book.

This book investigates how the radical left navigates the terrain of nationalism. Traversing Spain, Italy and Portugal, this in-depth study examines how radical left parties either embrace, rebuff or reshape nationalistic sentiments. From Spain’s Podemos grappling with Franco’s legacy, Italy’s radical left switching from anti-fascist patriotism to cosmopolitanism, to Portugal’s revolutionary echoes in left-leaning banal nationalism, the book offers comprehensive insight into the often-overlooked relationship between radical left politics and national identity. Through discourse analysis, interviews and participant observation, it delves into the reasons behind certain political positions and how they manifest discursively. A must-read for those eager to decipher the crossroads of national identity and left-wing politics in contemporary Europe.

This open access book analyses the convergence between ‘post-truth’ political culture and the politics of populism. The premise is that there is an intrinsic link between post-truth discourse (referring to mis/disinformation, ‘alternative facts’, ‘fake news’, conspiracy theories and the general distrust of expert knowledge and official sources of information) and the central narrative of populism, which opposes the ‘common sense’ wisdom of ordinary honest people to the ‘expert knowledge’ of duplicitous technocratic elites. The book investigates the current post-truth phenomenon as a distinct feature of contemporary political life, and the specific ways in which it intersects with the resurgence of populism. While there has been a considerable literature on both post-truth and populism, they are largely treated as separate phenomena, and very little research has been conducted on their actual connection. The original contribution of this book to an emerging field of study is to develop a strong, coherent and empirically informed theoretical framework for understanding the specific paradigm of post-truth populism. The authors propose this paradigm as a way of interpreting different contemporary political phenomena, such as conspiracy theories, political destabilisation, and debates around immigration, the role of journalists and the media, climate change, gender and sexuality, Islam, and minority rights, as well as a way of understanding the threats and challenges this poses to the liberal democratic model and way of life.

This book analyses political leadership, addressing key questions central to the ongoing debate on the transformation of contemporary democracies. What exactly is political leadership? How does the relationship between leadership and power shape democratic transformations? What role do individuals play in broader historical processes? How does the personalisation of politics manifest, and how does it differ between leader democracy and populism? Is there still room for charismatic leadership in modern democracies and societies?

These are some of the critical questions explored in this volume. The book traces the sociological relationship between leadership and power from foundational theories in the social sciences, through the personalisation of politics, to the rise of leader democracy and populist leadership. This book will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners in the fields of political sociology, political science, and leadership studies, as well as anyone engaged in understanding the evolving dynamics of leadership in contemporary democracies.

This volume provides a broad analysis of feminist movements--both historical and present-day--in Europe. It will fill the gap in the literature on feminist mobilizations through a systematic analysis of European third wave feminism from a cross-national perspective (covering Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, and Turkey) and a cross-time perspective (covering the time frame 2010-2021). In doing this, the authors also single out the different constellations of feminist movements as related to specific national political opportunities and networks of alliance and opposition. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in gender studies, feminist theory, and social movement studies.

This book offers a detailed overview of the politics of contemporary social movements in Central and Eastern Europe. The analysis of 11 countries reveals the relevance of protest events, social movements, and civil society in shaping democratic transition and consolidation, electoral politics and institutions, socio-economic policies, and geopolitical orientation. This volume shows how power structures and government institutions respond to civic mobilisations and protests, using diverse tactics ranging from co-option to repression and how protests and mobilisations became consequential in the region's politics.

This book examines lobbying in the European Union, the practices and social trajectories of interest representatives working in Brussels. Lobbying now occupies a central place in the government of the European Union and is also at the heart of European politics, as shown by the recent Qatargate scandal. The subject of lobbying has a long history in political science, and lobbying the European Union has been the subject of now classic works and specialist journals, testifying to the great success of this subject. However, most of this work have left aside the question of the professional identity, trajectories and social properties of the actors who work on a daily basis in the coproduction of European public action. Indeed, few works have been yet devoted to analysing their concrete practices. Despite the fact that over 12,000 organisations are now on the European Transparency Register, declaring increasing annual lobbying budgets, we still know very little about those who carry out this activity.

This open access book explores how polycrises not only generate new forms of inequality and social exclusion but also inspire new political activism, solidarity, and citizenship. It examines how social movement organizations frame their responses to exclusionary policies and regimes, and sheds light on their strategies for mobilization. By focusing on contemporary movements and their framing of social issues in times of crisis, the book offers valuable insights into social movement studies, urban studies, political communication, and frame analysis. It also engages with broader theoretical and public discussions on solidarity and citizenship. This book is ideal for scholars and students interested in social movements, political struggles, and fields such as migration, housing, and care.

This Open Access book investigates the transnational dimension of activism — exploring how and why non-state actors scale up contention from the local to the transnational arena, how they translate their grievances and claims into the transnational arena, and how they organize across borders. Moving beyond the analysis of individual campaigns, or a single-country or single-issue focus, which are already well represented in the literature, this volume takes a comprehensive approach. It investigates transnational activities across various policy fields and their respective transnational arenas of contention — namely migration, labour struggles, human rights, and environmental/climate justice — across a range of geographic contexts. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the contributions in this volume examine cases of transnational contention spanning the EU and its broader neighborhood, from the Western Balkans to the South Caucasus and the Mediterranean. Focusing on European spaces as the arena where civil society actors mobilize, this volume offers insights into their diverse repertoires of contention and discursive strategies, and how they refer to the European Union as the direct or indirect target of their claims.  Key cases include grassroots movements, NGO campaigns, pro-European forces, Eurosceptic parties, healthcare and climate justice activism, and the organizational dynamics surrounding migration-related contentious politics.

Offering guidelines for future research on civil society actors in the EU and its neighbourhood, this volume is essential reading for scholars and students of political sociology, political science, European studies, as well as practitioners and policy makers concerned with the future of civil society activism in the transnational arena.

This open access book provides a comprehensive mapping of anti-gender mobilizations in Italy, Slovenia, France, Spain, Turkey, Poland, Greece, and Denmark. In recent years, Europe has witnessed the rise and consolidation of these mobilizations, posing significant challenges to progress in equality politics. While analyzing the key actors, strategies, and discourses driving these movements, the book also shifts its focus to feminist and LGBT+ resistance. Drawing on interviews with activists from eight European countries, it identifies key opposition strategies that increasingly reflect productive resistance. By examining these evolving forms of activism, the book sheds light on the threats posed by anti-gender mobilizations and the innovative responses that sustain feminist and LGBT+ movements in today’s struggles. It will be of interest to researchers and students in gender studies, feminist studies, political sociology, and comparative politics.

This publication has been conducted in the context of the FIERCE project. FIERCE has received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe Research and Innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 101061748. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor European Research Executive Agency can be held responsible for them.