Culture and Conflict

No. 28, April 1997

Interpreting Europe

• "Interpreting Europe" results from the exchanges occurred between 1994 and 1997 within a work group shared by two laboratories: CERI (International Research and Studies Center) of the FNSP (National Fund for Political Sciences of Paris) and CERAT (Research Center on Politics, Administration, Town and Territory) of the IEP (Institute for Political Studies of Grenoble).

• While setting up and animating this group, the purpose was to gather political scientists working more or less closely on the stake represented by the European integration in order to question ourselves on methodological and conceptual problems related to analysis. During these meetings, the group members raised a double question which constitutes the guideline of this special edition.

• While referring to Europe, what are the consequences on the formation of actor and idea schemes within the member States of the European Union? In their contributions dedicated to European Union policies in the cultural field and on the mobilisation forms among immigrants respectively, Mireille Pongy and Riva Kastoryano underline the need to linking public action analysis at the European level to the analysis of a remaking of national configurations, which are more than ever present.

• How can this impact be formulated in a framework of a more general reshaping of politics occurring in Europe since the Seventies?

• While focusing on how the European integration can be interpreted and conceived from a social sciences point of view, this edition aims at a triple target.

• The first one is to show that several analysis schemes developed by French political sciences in order to make public action forms distinguished by territory and by field more evident give the European integration research a mean to overcome the useless conflict between the intergovernmental and the transnational supporters which still nurtures a large part of Anglo-Saxon literature.

• The second target consists in demonstrating that the study of public action within the European Union cannot be limited to management prescriptions on European institution and regulation efficiency but it must lead to seize the legitimisation of a political system which is being constituted taking into account, notably, the relation between public action and symbols. Marc Abélès gives evidence in his article by presenting the means used by anthropologists to apprehend this relation. Going back to the emphasis the European Commission puts on the evaluation of some European public policies, Laurence Jourdain underlines the aptitude of European authorities not only to face management requirements but also to try to act legally towards society.

• Finally, the intention was to stress the imperious need to tightly link the European integration conceptualisation and the field work support related to the actors's political practices and their social and historical context.

• Though stemming from a common inquiry, the following contributions do not gather consensus on the way to apprehend politics within the European Union. To be convinced, just refer to the opposition between a European integration generating a political change by thresholds of quality, according to Luc Rouban's words in his study on French public utilities, or, on the contrary, a European integration generating a political change through a learning cycle, as stated by Pierre Muller and Sophie Rouault in their study on the implementation of a European program on employment. This controversy reflects perfectly well the spirit which characterizes this special edition: an open-minded debate. So we hope that this French conceptual and empirical "milestone" will generate new criticism and analysis on the European integration interpretation, especially coming from young researchers and Ph.D. students in political sciences.