Studying the politics of EU social policy

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• EGPP: European Governance and Politics Programme
• SOLID: Policy Crisis and Crisis Politics. Sovereignty, Solidarity and Identity in the EU post 2008

This presentation is part of the comparative crisis research seminar series

The crises of the last decade revealed again the notorious tensions between the economic and the social dimension of the EU polity. What we call ‘the social crisis of Europe’—a gradual and cumulative crisis with more or less intense manifestations and varying territorial connotations, manifests itself in rising inequality, high poverty as well as concentrations of unemployment. Despite the priority given to fiscal consolidation, the EU made some steps towards deepening its social dimension. Our research explains the conditions that fostered the expansion of EU social policy despite strong countervailing pressures. Theoretically, we re-interpret the debate on Social Europe in light of the state-building school of political development. This approach stresses the link between the EU as a compound polity and its social dimension as a way to ‘bond’ the member states together, while acting as a corrective to unintended consequences of market integration. Empirically, we seek to uncover the political mechanisms and the coalition dynamics that turn manifestations of the social crisis into opportunities for expanding EU social policy interventions.

The presentation will focus on the book introduction (which delineates the social crisis of Europe and its ‘erosive’ pattern), on the analytical framework, and on insights from the concluding chapter, which takes stock of the findings from the eight empirical chapters in a comparative fashion.

By invitation only.