The European Union: A Political Sociology advances a new framework of social theory for studying the dynamics of integration, governance and networks in Europe. In doing so it offers the first full-length treatment of European integration from a political sociology perspective.

The book's main contribution to EU studies is to problematize the idea of integration, arguing that there are other important processes shaping contemporary Europe, not all of them originating with or capable of being fully controlled by the EU, and not all leading to "ever closer union."

Within this broad objective the book concerns itself with such key issues as the relation between the EU and globalization, the nature of the EU state, and the question of whether a European society can be said to exist. The book also addresses crucial policy areas such as unemployment, citizenship, social exclusion, cohesion, core-periphery relations, the "democratic deficit," and enlargement.

The book also addresses crucial policy areas such as unemployment, citizenship, social exclusion, cohesion, core-periphery relations, the "democratic deficit", and enlargement.

The book also recasts the core issues of political sociology by focusing on the nature of, and relationship between, the state, society and the individual in contemporary Europe, each fundamentally transformed by both the processes of integration itself, and by wider processes of social change such as globalization. To this end the book advances three central propositions.

The first is that European integration poses questions which fall beyond sociology’s traditional field of competence - state-centric political rule and nationally bounded cleavages.

The second proposition is that a political sociology informed by recent contributions to social theory, particularly the work of the globalization theorists, post-Marxists and the governmentality theorists, can make an extremely valuable contribution to thinking about the nature of, and problems besetting, the European Union.

The third proposition is that the resulting political sociology framework is potentially a very productive one with which we can begin to understand the nature of transnational space in general, and the EU in particular.


"A much needed contribution to the study of the European Union from a sociological perspective. Rumford usefully problematises most of the established discourses on European integration and sets the debate in the context of a globalising world."
Barrie Axford, Oxford Brookes University

"Rumford draws widely and authoritatively on the new political sociology to show its potential for challenging orthodox views on the future of Europe. The result is a very effective argument that globalization as social transformation makes possible multiple Europes beyond the limits of the European Union. This will become a standard text for students of contemporary European politics and society."
Martin Albrow, State University of New York, Stony Brook


Key features of the book

• Offers the first full-length treatment of European integration from a sociological perspective.

• Demonstrates the contribution political sociology can make to an understanding of European integration.

• Develops a political sociology of transnational spaces.

• Advances a vigorous reinterpretation of the idea of European integration.

• Engages with contemporary social theory, especially the work of globalization theorists, post-Marxists and governmentality theorists.

Chapters

1. Introduction: a new approach to studying European integration
   
2. The European Union and globalization
   
3. The question of the European state
   
4. European society
   
5. Unemployment, social exclusion and citizenship
   
6. Cohesion policy and regional autonomy
   
7. Rethinking core-periphery relations
   
8. Europe and democracy
   
9. EU enlargement
   
10. Conclusion
    

The European Union: A Political Sociology

The book is motivated by three major beliefs. First, that a political sociology of European integration is much needed. Second, that political sociology has much to offer in conceptualising and explaining the dynamics of integration and the processes of contemporary social change. Thirdly, that a political sociology of this kind can benefit from the incorporation of ideas from contemporary social theory. I am thinking particularly of ideas emerging from certain strands of post-Marxism, and especially the work of the governmentality and globalization theorists.

The European Union: a political sociology combines a reassessment of the key concerns of political sociology - the relationships that exist between the individual, society and the state - with an analysis of the major transformations of our time - the collapse of communism, European Union integration, and globalization. The book recognises that the object of traditional political sociology has undergone many changes in recent times, resulting from both theoretical and empirical shifts. As such, the book utilises 'cutting edge' sociological theories in the task of understanding change in contemporary Western Europe.

A key theme in political sociology is the relationship between the individual, society and the state. Many important issues in relation to the EU centre on the type of state that the EU represents, the nature of European society, and the role of the individual in the European polity. In the case of the state, one version of the debate centres not only on whether the EU is a nation-state writ large or an internationalization of the national state for example, but also the extent to which the EU represents a form of multi-level government, with sub-national regional government and the supra-national EU increasingly carrying out what were previously the tasks of the nation-state. In relation to European society, it is frequently asserted that sociology has traditionally assumed a congruence between society and nation-state, and that it has been unwilling to question the naturalness of these 'national containers'. The development of the EU and the advent of pan-European structures of governance causes us to reconsider the whole idea of society, and invites us to consider the structure and organisation of social and political life in a globalized world where trans-national flows are becoming increasingly important. The corollary of this is that we can no longer talk of homogenous national societies, and need to recognise the plurality of social groups existing within (and across) nation-states. European societies are multi-cultural, multi-ethnic etc. As for the individual, there are many considerations invited by the ongoing processes of European integration: questions of citizenship, involvement in/exclusion from the political process, and the politics of identity are some of the most prominent. So when dealing with social change at this level we can say that the proximity of European integration recasts the focus of sociological inquiry into the relationships between the individual, society, and state, to take into account new levels of state power, the existence of societies beyond states, and a reordering of the role and responsibilities of the individual.

Such an investigation forms part of the task of political sociology, and in its own right is an interesting project. However, as I see it, a study of contemporary Europe must investigate other, more fundamental, changes. The brief discussion of the changing nature of state and society outlined above assumes that to a significant extent each remains largely unaltered by the processes that have contributed to European integration. They are merely extended and aggregated to a new level, or fractured and divided into new components. Such an analysis also assumes that sociology can continue to employ traditional concepts and theories with which to understand these changes. One of the most important ideas that the proposed study will develop is that the state, society and the individual have been fundamentally transformed, and that it is the proper task of political sociology to identify and deploy the most appropriate tools with which to investigate such a transformation.

For example, in the case of the state, it is no longer possible to talk of the state - either the nation-state or its sub-or supra-national variants - as the primary loci of political power. A criticism often levelled at traditional political sociology is that its focus was the central state, its powers and the party politics associated with state rule. Contemporary sociology must examine the state within the wider field of forms of government. In Europe the state is better thought of as but one element in a decentred array of sources of power and authority. To study the EU we must examine the type of government consistent with the ways in which the EU seeks to regulate a harmonized European economic space, for example. Or the ways in which EU policies encourage the responsibilization and self-regulation of a whole range of actors: regions, enterprises, citizens. In this regard my thinking is influenced by the governmentality theorists, whose work I will discuss in more detail later.

A sociological study of the EU offers an opportunity to examine the nature of European societies under conditions of globalization. Indeed, the European Union is very model of the trans-national, globalized, post-industrial societies that should be the focus of political sociology. A study of contemporary European societies must begin with the recognition that in the same way that the state has undergone many changes, society too has been transformed. If the EU is not a nation-state writ large then neither can European society be simply an enlarged and expanded version of that found within nations. We must accept the need for a new conceptual approach to the studies of society. One of the key elements in such an approach is to problematize the notion of civil society. It is argued that civil society is an outmoded notion and that there are two main reasons why this is the case. The first is to do with the way that it is employed within sociology, the second a conceptual consideration of its role in a political sociology of contemporary Europe.

There is a trend towards valorising civil society as the realm of possibility for progressive political change. This is particularly true in the case of 'global civil society'. On this model, under conditions of globalization many organisations exist not just between the individual and the (national) state, but also outside national boundaries, and, importantly, also across them. Global civil society opens the way for the development of global democratic institutions and underpins the idea of cosmopolitan democracy. There are many problems with this formulation (in addition to its unwarranted optimism): it works with a very narrow and limited notion of civil society, detaches it from its traditional relationship with the state, and expands it to global proportions. In fact, the entire state/civil society relationship is projected onto a global framework: the internationalization of the state is coupled with the globalization of civil society. I wish to argue that this is not an appropriate framework within which to view contemporary change in the EU.

One reason for this is that it is the liberal democratic model of civil society, rather than the Marxist one, for example, that is currently dominant in political sociology. This means that there is a strong association of civil society with the idea of political freedom, expression of opposition to an existing regime, and democratization. The idea of civil society has been invested with associations of political and democratic progress in the face of state intransigence: I am thinking of the way it has been used to characterise emerging democratic and free-market structures in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe and Turkey, for example. There are several problems with this characterisation from the perspective of political sociology. For example, it suggests a separation of the realms of state and civil society which is not compatible with the brief analysis of the state outlined above ie. that the state should be seen as but one source of authority within a much broader field of government and political power relations. Neither is it compatible with the position developed by Gramsci, that civil society is a realm in which democratic rule is exercised. Also, we know from the governmentality theorists that government also works through the agencies and manageable spaces of 'civil society'. Rather than being a realm of freedom civil society is a technology of government.

There is another reason why the concept of civil society is outmoded, and why it cannot simply be resurrected as global civil society. Theorists of globalization and the post-Marxists for example, have undermined the idea of society as a coherent unit, as a totality. As such we must embrace the idea that there is no single organising principle structuring society. Following Laclau, perhaps it is more appropriate to talk about 'the social' rather than society. This has the advantage of removing associations of a bounded, discrete, regulated entity conjured up by the idea of society. If we view the social as not fixed and stable, but incomplete and unbounded, then it is no longer possible to view civil society as a discrete realm of the social with a privileged role in the transformation of society. The idea of the social has, I believe, an important application to contemporary Europe. The idea of the social as an unbounded collection of elements not patterned according to the logic of a determining principle further frees us from the necessity to study the EU in terms of either a supra-national entity or the aggregate of its member states. The idea of the social also allows us to move away from a rigid cartographical notion of the EU. We can begin to think of the EU not as a totality or an integrated whole, but as a series of overlapping networks and diffuse power centres.

So far I have sketched some key features of, and new relationships between, society and the state occasioned by European integration. I have emphasised the need to go beyond an approach that merely refocusses sociological inquiry to accommodate the existence of new levels of state power and the existence of societies beyond states. To this end I have outlined a political sociology which acknowledges changing forms of political governance and the concomitant reordering of society. However, there is still another dimension of political sociology that we have not yet discussed: the problematization of the notion of the individual. We can say that one of the most important aspects of a whole range of theorizing in the field of political sociology (especially work associated with poststructuralism, postmodernism, post-Marxism) has been to challenge established notions of the individual (the subject). The notion of the subject associated with modernity, the purposive, self-conscious, reflexive, human agent has given way, under the influence of postmodern thought (broadly construed) to a notion of the decentred, fragmented and partial subject whose identity is neither given a priori or fixed, but open, contingent and malleable. This has implications for the individual both as a political actor and as a member of a collectivity. In the same way as societies are no longer though to be unitary with respect to ethnic and national identity, our collectives selves are increasingly seen as fractured, fragmented and multiple. These shifts have several consequences. First, the object of politics is no longer what it under conditions of modernity. Collective political action is no longer centred on the politics of state power: it is increasingly an ethical politics centred on the expression of self-identity. Second, political and social transformation does not necessarily proceed according to previously accepted models. The politics of emancipation have given way to a politics of identity recognition in the passage from modernity to postmodernity and post-materialism.