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International audience; COVID-19 has caused unprecedented disruption to previously settled everyday routines, prompting a period of forced experimentation as people have adjusted to rapid changes in their private and working lives. For discussions regarding consumption, this period of experimentation has been interesting, as the apparent instability has disturbed the ongoing trajectory of consumption practices, and with it has created possibilities for transition toward sustainability. In this article, we examine food practices (e.g., food shopping, preparation, and eating) in seven countries (France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, UK, and Vietnam) to assess what we can learn to accelerate transitions toward sustainable consumption. Grounded in a practice theoretical approach, our empirical analysis shows how disruption of everyday routines has generated socio-materially bounded experimentation. We demonstrate commonalities across contexts in how lockdown measures have restricted the performance of previously taken-for-granted practices. We also show diversity in experimentation as food consumption is entangled in other everyday practices. Our study, on one hand, portrays how adaptation of food practices allows disruption to be managed, demonstrating creativity in working within and around restrictions to continue to provide services for everyday life. On the other hand, we reveal that the capacity of experimentation is not evenly distributed among people and this variation helps in identifying the wider socio-material conditions that constrain and enable opportunities for readjustment. Understanding disparities that affect experimentation (e.g., integration of food practices with work and caring practices) is informative when thinking about how to stimulate sustainability transformations in food practices and provides critical reflections on strategies to enable sustainable consumption.

Looming decisions on arms control and strategic weapon procurements in a range of nuclear-armed states are set to shape the international security environment for decades to come. In this context, it is crucial to understand the concepts, theories, and debates that condition nuclear policymaking. This review essay dissects the four editions of The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, the authoritative intellectual history of its subject. Using this widely acclaimed work as a looking glass into the broader field of nuclear security studies, we interrogate the field's underlying assumptions and question the correspondence between theory and practice in the realm of nuclear policy. The study of nuclear strategy, we maintain, remains largely committed to an interpretive approach that invites analysts to search for universal axioms and to abstract strategic arguments from the precise circumstances of their occurrence. While this approach is useful for analysing the locutionary dimension of strategic debates, it risks obscuring the power structures, vested interests, and illocutionary forces shaping nuclear discourse. In the conclusion, we lay out avenues for future scholarship.

This article argues that political realists have at least two strategies to provide distinctively political normative judgements that have nothing to do with morality. The first ground is instrumental normativity, which states that if we believe that something is a necessary means to a goal we have, we have a reason to do it. In politics, certain means are required by any ends we may intend to pursue. The second ground is epistemic normativity, stating that if something is (empirically) true, this gives us a reason to believe it. In politics, there are certain empirical regularities that ought to be acknowledged for what they are. Both sources are flawed. Instrumental normativity only requires coherence between attitudes and beliefs, and one can hang on to false beliefs to preserve attitudes incompatible with reality. I may desire to eschew power relations, and accordingly I may imagine politics to be like a camping trip. Epistemic normativity, on the other hand, operates critically, striking down existing normative claims. It shows us that politics is nothing like a camping trip, but it doesn’t tell us what we should do about it (beyond abandoning some false beliefs). We conclude by showing that if the two are taken together, they remedy each other’s flaws.

International audience; Sources and data for social network analysis. Social network analysis (SNA) is becoming more and more widespread in several scientific disciplines as a method for processing social, economic, geographic, historical, digital, etc. data. Visualizations of graphs, communities and other ties are multiplying. However, there is a risk that SNA users may lose sight of the conditions under which their data are produced and thereby over-interpret or under-interpret the results. This article provides a guide to the different types of sources of network data, and the pitfalls and choices encountered in the process of producing network data. The first part provides an overview of these pitfalls and choices, and the second part focuses on the specifics of each source of data. Based on the authors’ experience in training network researchers, the article proposes a review of controlled ways of producing network data from this array of sources.; L'analyse des réseaux sociaux (ARS) ne cesse de se répandre dans plusieurs disciplines scientifiques comme une méthode de traitement de données sociales, économiques, géographiques, historiques, numériques, etc. Les visualisations de graphes, communautés et autres liens se multiplient et le risque existe que les utilisateurs et utilisatrices de l'ARS perdent de vue les conditions de production de leurs données et surinterprètent ou sous-interprètent de ce fait les résultats. Cet article propose un guide des différents types de sources qui se prêtent à l'ARS, en mettant l'accent sur les opérations de transformation de ces sources en données de réseau, les écueils qu'elles présentent et les grands arbitrages qu'elles impliquent. La première partie donne une présentation générale de ces éléments, que la seconde partie décline par type de source. Fondé sur une expérience de formateur et formatrices, l'article propose donc une recension des façons de produire des données de réseau en contrôlant au mieux leur rapport aux sources.

International audience; What might prompt a nuclear-armed state to give up its arsenal? Nuclear disarmament has provided a nominally shared goal for virtually all the world’s states for decades, yet surprisingly little effort has been devoted to systematically theorizing its drivers. This article aims to begin filling this void. I proceed in three steps. First, I discuss the conceptual, material, and ideational features of renunciation to arrive at a rudimentary understanding of what, fundamentally, nuclear disarmament as a political process involves. Second, I scope out the empirical evidence on which a general theory of nuclear renunciation might be based. Third, synthesizing the dominant explanations for the cases discussed in the second part, I outline a basic account of nuclear relinquishment and discuss the compatibility of this account with common assumptions about disarmament practice. I conclude that the best evidence available suggests that adversarial politics and stigmatization are necessary conditions for renunciation.

International audience; Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag fragt, welche Deutungsmuster mit der Konstruktion und Subjektivierung der aufsteigenden Berufsgruppe der ‚Data Scientists‘ einhergehen. Aus soziologischer Perspektive beruht ihre fortschreitende Institutionalisierung maßgeblich auf Objektivierungsprozessen sozialer Wissensbestände. Anhand einer diskursanalytischen Auswertung von Stellenanzeigen und Studiengangsbeschreibungen zeigen wir eine ambige Logik in der sozialen Konstruktion von Data Scientists auf. In Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft besteht einerseits Dissens über die Klassifikation und Einordnung von Data Scientists, während andererseits basale Deutungsmuster Data Scientists als GrenzgängerInnen, Anti-Nerds und WeltverbesserInnen diskursivieren. Die ambige Logik aus Dissens und Konsens interpretieren wir als einen strategischen Vorteil für die Professionalisierung: Ambiguität schafft Integrationsfähigkeit für unterschiedliche Erwartungshaltungen und Imaginationen. Der Beitrag legt die Subjektivierung ebenjener Professionals frei, die eine Schlüsselposition in der objektivierenden Digitalwirtschaft einnehmen.; This article studies the social construction of the emerging "data scientist" profession. Data science's ongoing institutionalization rests on the objectification of social stocks of knowledge. A discourse analysis of job ads and university programs reveals an ambiguous logic in the construction of data scientists. Initially, we show divergent classifications of data science work in the academic and economic fields. We then reveal deeper interpretation patterns across both fields that define data scientists as frontierspersons, anti-nerds, and do-gooders. We present this simultaneous divergence and consensus as a strategic advantage for professionalization: the underlying meaning integrates varying expectations and ideas around data scientists, who become broadly salient. The article thus presents the subjectivation of professionals in an objectifying digital economy.

International audience; This paper retraces the evolution of the relationships between higher education institutions, the state and the academic profession in France since the French Revolution on the one hand and the parallel evolution of the societal expectations for their roles and missions, on the other. It in particular highlights the divide between the universities and the grandes écoles, in charge of training the French economic, political, and administrative elites. Five phases are distinguished: the suppression of French universities during the French Revolution; the Republic of the Facultés from the end of the third Republic to 1968: the 1968 act and the rebirth of universities; the empowerment of universities and their extended missions during the last decade of the twentieth century; the recent reforms aimed at differentiating the French higher education system and bringing universities at its centre.

International audience; After recalling the lineage between hacktivist pioneers and the anti-technocratic tactics of the New Left, this article construes the repressive wave that hit hackers at the end of the 1980s as one of the power strategies designed to close the crisis of governmentality initiated in the 1960s — a strategy that has since been reactivated whenever a “hacker front” seemed about to materialise. In so doing, it analyses this securitisation of cyberspace and the repression of transgressive action repertoires as a critical moment in the genealogy of authoritarian liberalism.; Après avoir rappelé la filiation entre les pionniers du militantisme hacker et les tactiques anti-technocratiques engagées par la Nouvelle Gauche, cet article propose d’interpréter la vague répressive qui frappa les hackers à la fin des années 1980 comme l’une des stratégies de pouvoir conçues pour refermer la crise de gouvernementalité engagée dans les années 1960 — une stratégie depuis réactivée chaque fois qu’un « front hacker » a semblé sur le point de se reconstituer. Ce faisant, il invite à voir dans cet épisode de sécurisation du cyberespace et de répression des répertoires d’action transgressifs un moment critique dans la généalogie du libéralisme autoritaire.

The COVID-19 crisis has demanded that governments take restrictive measures that are abnormal for most representative democracies. This article aims to examine the determinants of the public’s evaluations towards those measures. This article focuses on political trust and partisanship as potential explanatory factors of evaluations of each government’s health and economic measures to address the COVID-19 crisis. To study these relationships between trust, partisanship and evaluation of measures, data from a novel comparative panel survey is utilised, comprising eleven democracies and three waves, conducted in spring 2020. This article provides evidence that differences in evaluations of the public health and economic measures between countries also depend on contextual factors, such as polarisation and the timing of the measures’ introduction by each government. Results show that the public’s approval of the measures depends strongly on their trust in the national leaders, an effect augmented for voters of the opposition. Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.1930754 .

Not all politics is local. Not even local politics is necessarily local. The reemergence of local politics is not comparable to the nationalization of politics but is rather an element making multilevel policies more or less interconnected. This global review (not including North America) suggests that the rise of local politics is explained by three set of processes—( a) democratization, including protest, ( b) economic globalization, urbanization, and the deepening of territorial inequalities, and ( c) decentralization or deconcentration and the rise of local governance and policies. The rise of local politics is not a revival of the past but an element of the politics of scale taking. All over the world, local politics is increasingly about policies, governance, and political choice.

Il aura fallu plus de quatre années pour que le référendum britannique du 22 juin 2016 sur le Brexit soit mis en œuvre sous la forme tout d’abord d’un accord de retrait, puis d’un accord organisant la relation future entre le Royaume-Uni –devenu un État tiers– et l’Union européenne (UE). Les débats au Royaume-Uni et les négociations avec l’Union européenne ont suscité un flot régulier de controverses et de tensions politiques. Il n’est dès lors guère étonnant que le Brexit ait donné lieu à une vaste littérature de science politique. Certains travaux portent plutôt sur les aspects internes du référendum (Evans et Menon, 2017 ; Diamond, Nedergaard et Rosamond, 2018 ; Rose, 2020). D’autres, moins nombreux, sont consacrés plus spécifiquement à l’impact du Brexit sur les 27 États-membres restants et le processus de l’intégration européenne (Kassim et Usherwood, 2018 ; Oliver, 2018 ; Martill et Staiger, 2018, Jacobs, 2018). Plusieurs travaux portent sur les implications de la sortie de l’UE sur la politique étrangère du Royaume-Uni (Duke, 2018 ; Hill, 2019 ; Martill et Sus, 2018 ; Whitman, 2020). Mais rares sont, en revanche, les recherches quant à l’impact du Brexit sur la politique étrangère de l’UE...

This work examines the validity of the two main assumptions of relative risk-aversion models of educational inequality. We compare the Breen-Goldthorpe (BG) and the Breen-Yaish (BY) models in terms of their assumptions about status maintenance motives and beliefs about the occupational risks associated with educational decisions. Concerning the first assumption, our contribution is threefold. First, we criticise the assumption of the BG model that families aim only at avoiding downward mobility and are insensitive to the prospects of upward mobility. We argue that the loss-aversion assumption proposed by BY is a more realistic formulation of status-maintenance motives. Second, we propose and implement a novel empirical approach to assess the validity of the loss-aversion assumption. Third, we present empirical results based on a sample of families of lower secondary school leavers indicating that families are sensitive to the prospects of both upward and downward mobility, and that the loss-aversion hypothesis of BY is empirically supported. As regards the risky choice assumption, we argue that families may not believe that more ambitious educational options entail occupational risks relative to less ambitious ones. We present empirical evidence indicating that, in France, the academic path is not perceived as a risky option. We conclude that, if the restrictive assumptions of the BG model are removed, relative-risk aversion needs not drive educational inequalities.

War and State (Re)Construction in Afghanistan: Conflicts of Tradition or Conflicts of Development?Foreign aid provided for the (re)construction of the Afghan state since 2001 has, paradoxically, intensified the ‘ethnicisation’ and sectarianisation of economic and political relations, contradicting the criteria of good governance advocated by donors. Conflicts apparently related to tradition and identity have become more common and indeed point to more fundamental contradictions between the culturalist representation of Afghan society and the effects of the country’s integration into the world capitalist economy. Thus, viewing Islamic radicalisation, ethnic polarisation or tribal atavism as responsible for the social and political violence in Afghanistan gives an incomplete picture of the situation as it ignores transformations in society and the new challenges of this supposedly traditional conflict.; L’aide étrangère destinée depuis 2001 à la (re)construction de l’État afghan a paradoxalement amplifié l’ethnicisation et la confessionnalisation des rapports économiques et politiques, en totale contradiction avec les critères de bonne gouvernance prônés par les bailleurs de fonds. Les conflits d’apparence traditionnelle ou identitaire se sont multipliés, renvoyant en fait à des contradictions plus fondamentales entre la représentation culturaliste de la société afghane et les effets de l’insertion du pays dans l’économie capitaliste mondiale. Ainsi, le fait de rendre la radicalisation islamique, la polarisation ethnique ou l’atavisme tribal responsables de la violence sociale et politique en Afghanistan dénote d’une vision incomplète de la situation, dans la mesure où celle-ci ne tient pas compte des transformations de la société et des nouveaux enjeux de cette conflictualité supposée traditionnelle.

Au cours des années 2000, les politiques d’immigration et de citoyenneté instaurées en Europe et en Amérique du Nord donnent lieu à la formulation d’un nouveau paradigme d’action publique, qualifié d’« intégration civique » (Joppke, 2007 ; Mouritsen, 2008). Dans les travaux qui leur sont consacrés, ces politiques sont présentées comme marquant un « tournant » (« civic turn »), visible dans la mise en place d’une série de dispositifs et de lois en matière d’entrée, de séjour, d’intégration des...

The last 20 years have been characterized by very different dynamics: massive reduction of milk and, to a lesser extent, dairy consumption; fewer positive attitudes towards milk; no reclaims for affordable, public dairy production; the development of a large conversation about the presumed risks associated with the intake of lactose; and semantic battles on non-dairy ‘milk’ alternatives. These new attitudes haven’t been systematically studied. We explore here the links between milk/dairy consumption, health concerns, and trust in medical expertise. Through an online survey of highly educated youth in Italy (N=378) we have investigated: milk and dairy consumption; attitudes towards items carried out by vegan movements; attitudes towards medical expertise and trust in counseling by general practitioners. Results show that anti-speciesist and vegan movements are very little known among consumers. Data display very limited impact of the ideas and concepts of anti-milk movements within our sample. The results highlight that milk consumption shrinking is due to health concern and an unfavorable perception of dangerous consequences in lactose intake, and additionally to a general distrust towards medical expertise and evidence-based arguments. Indeed, we observe a tendency to self-diagnose intolerance/allergies, questioning the role of physicians and medical knowledge in advising for dietary choices among highly educated youth. The analysis of the patterns of consumption and motives clearly shows that health considerations, not politics, are behind the Italian youth’s dairy restrictions. Healthy consumerism emerges as a concept fitting better than political consumerism for interpreting our results.; Les vingt dernières années ont été traversées par différentes dynamiques : la réduction massive de la consommation de lait et, dans une moindre mesure, de produits laitiers ; des attitudes de plus en plus négatives à l’égard du lait ; aucune revendication pour une production abordable et publique du lait ; le développement d’une vaste discussion à propos des risques qui seraient associés à la consommation de lactose ; et des batailles sémantiques autour des alternatives que constituent les « laits » non laitiers. Ces nouvelles attitudes n’ont pas été systématiquement étudiées. Nous explorons ici les liens entre la consommation de lait et de produits laitiers, les préoccupations en matière de santé et la confiance dans l’expertise médicale. À partir d’un sondage en ligne auprès des populations jeunes et éduquées en Italie (N=378), nous avons analysé : la consommation de lait et de produits laitiers, les attitudes envers les arguments portés par les mouvements végans, les attitudes envers l’expertise médicale et la confiance dans les conseils dispensés par les médecins. Les résultats ont mis en évidence que les mouvements antispécistes et végans sont assez peu connus des consommateurs. Les données ont montré que les idées et les concepts des mouvements anti-lait avaient un impact limité sur notre échantillon. Les résultats soulignent que la réduction de la consommation de lait est due à des préoccupations en matière de santé et à une perception défavorable des apports en lactose et, additionnellement, à une méfiance générale envers l’expertise médicale et les arguments fondés sur des preuves. En effet, nous observons une tendance à l’auto-diagnostic pour les intolérances et les allergies, une tendance chez les populations jeunes et éduquées qui mettent en doute le rôle des médecins et du savoir médical dans l’accompagnement diététique. L’analyse des schémas de consommation et de motivation montre clairement que des considérations liées à la santé, et non à des opinions politiques, sont derrière les restrictions des jeunes italiens en matière de produits laitiers. Un consumérisme orienté vers la recherche d’une meilleure santé a émergé, un concept qui fonctionne mieux que celui de consumérisme politique pour interpréter nos résultats.

Contemporary political economy is predicated on widely shared ideas and assumptions, some explicit but many implicit, about the past. Our aim in this Special Issue is to draw attention to, and to assess critically, these historical assumptions. In doing so, we hope to contribute to a political economy that is more attentive to the analytic assumptions on which it is premised, more aware of the potential oversights, biases, and omissions they contain, and more reflexive about the potential costs of these blind spots. This is an Introduction to one of two Special Issues that are being published simultaneously by New Political Economy and Review of International Political Economy reflecting on blind spots in international political economy. Together, these Special Issues seek to identify the key blind spots in the field and to make sense of how many scholars missed or misconstrued important dynamics that define contemporary capitalism and the other systems and sources of social inequality that characterise our present. This particular Special Issue pursues this goal by looking backwards, to the history of political economy and at the ways in which we have come to tell that history, in order to understand how we got to the present moment.

Identifying and explaining change in the structure of central state bureaucracies and the determinants of survival of individual public organizations are two closely related areas of research in public administration. We aim to bridge the gap between these two main strands of studies of organizational change by presenting a novel approach to collecting event history data for public organizations. We have developed this framework as part of the Structure and Organisation of Governments Project, which aims to map entire central state bureaucracies in three Western European countries. Our approach is flexible enough to describe macro-trends in public sector organization populations and to explain these trends by analysing the event histories of the organizations they comprise. In addition to presenting our framework and how we applied it to create this data set, we also present some initial cross-national comparisons of the distribution of the event types recorded, highlighting initial findings and promising avenues for further research. Points for practitioners We present here a novel approach for representing the structural changes that organizations and sub-departments experience over time that can apply to any hierarchical organization (public or private). Applying the approach illuminates the historical development of organizations and their parts, and allows cross-national comparisons of events and trends across organizations. Our comparison of ministerial organizations in France, Germany and the Netherlands from 1980 to 2013 shows that trends in the size of bureaucracies mask considerable structural changes within.

Through engaging with everyday practices among student activists in contemporary Indian campus politics, this ethnographic study examines the breadcrumb trail between the left and self-fashioning. It focuses on a performative modality of political representation in Indian democracy by tracing the formation of biographical reconfigurations that implement subject-oriented techniques. The article charts their relevance in producing political legitimacy. It engages with the way in which personal reconfigurations are mobilized to recruit and appeal to both subaltern and privileged communities, thus generating universalistic representative claims and political efficacy.The study discusses self-presentations among leading left activists who are members of five contending Marxist student organizations that are active in Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University campus. It shows that reconfigurations are a hallmark of practices of social ‘downlift’ which echo the notion ofdeclassifying, a concept developed by philosopher Jacques Rancière. While embracing secularism and the legacy of political martyrs, the analysis illustrates how self-fashioning attempts to erase signs and habits attached to economic and social privileges through subverting and engaging creatively with sacrificial and ascetic tropes. Conversely, such practices find themselves critically questioned by activists at the bottom of the social ladder who aspire to social upliftment, including members of lower castes and impoverished Muslim communities. I find that the biographical effects of left activism are both long-lasting and renegotiable, shaping campus lives and subsequent professional careers. While such reconfigurations are not inspired by world renouncers of the Hindu mendicant tradition, these practices of the self might exemplify the historical cross-fertilization between long-standing cultural idioms and the Indian Marxist praxis.

The COVID-19 disease was first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, having since spread rapidly across the world. The infection and mortality rates of the disease have forced governments to implement a wave of public health measures. Depending on the context, these range from the implementation of simple hygienic rules to measures such as social distancing or lockdowns that cause major disruptions in citizens’ daily lives. The success of these crucial public health measures rests on the public's willingness to comply. However, individual differences in following the official public health recommendations for stopping the spread of COVID-19 have not yet to our knowledge been assessed. This study aims to fill this gap by assessing the sociodemographic and psychological correlates of implementing public health recommendations that aim to halt the COVID-19 pandemic. We investigate these associations in the context of France, one of the countries that has been most severely affected by the pandemic, and which ended up under a nationwide lockdown on March 17. In the next sections we describe our theoretical expectations over the associations between sociodemographics, personality, ideology, and emotions with abiding by the COVID-19 public health measures. We then test these hypotheses using data from the French Election Study.

Contemporary West European shantytowns have essentially been studied with qualitative methods. Questions related to their ethnic structure, homophily and interaction with local institutions have not been analysed through large samples and survey data. Based on the example of Romanian and Bulgarian Roma living in shantytowns in the Parisian metropolitan area, we analyse the ‘historical’ region of origin (autochthony), networks between individuals and households having lived together in a shantytown, as well as some of their attitudes, skills, and behaviour (i.e. expectations as to local welfare, French proficiency, children’s schooling). We used a database of slum-dwellers in Paris collected by social workers (N = 12,019). The paper looks at how autochthonies combine with socialisation in shantytowns and with territorial institutional effects of local policies. Evidence shows that while there are limited differences in the socio-professional backgrounds of slum-dwellers, there are several differences in attitudes, behaviour and skills. Moreover, social network analysis shows that these differences are only weakly related to the households’ region of origin (autochthony), while they are more correlated to emergent structural clusters of co-habitation connections, where individuals socialise in acting together to build and manage a shantytown. Moreover, local policies at the city level play a role in shaping shantytown dwellers expectations and skills for integration.

Recognising that citizenship is an object of contention, this article studies how political actors mobilise the concept of citizenship at the subnational level. As immigrant integration policies define the ‘boundaries of citizenship’, I study the discourse on immigrant integration to trace political parties’ arguments supporting or opposing subnational citizenship. I conduct a qualitative content analysis of parliamentary debates between 1999 and 2014 in two subnational communities that express strong nationalist feelings: Flanders and Quebec. I find that citizenship is a rhetorical tool used by political actors, especially by sub-state nationalist parties, to promote their own political perspective (e.g. nation-building and identity). In Quebec, the Parti Québécois has monopolised the concept of citizenship, first to promote statehood and then to insist on values and identity. In Flanders, the notion of citizenship was not conceived in opposition to the central state, but in establishing citizenship trajectories and language requirements. In both cases, the discourses of sub-state nationalist parties have been marked by an ‘identity turn’, featuring a renewed insistence on identity, language and values. By focusing on the subnational level, this comparative study contributes to the rescaling of citizenship studies, while underlining the challenges presented when subnational actors in multinational settings mobilise around citizenship.

Published 16 November 2021. Under embargo until 16 November 2022 The content of this document represents only the views of the TRANSNATIONAL team and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains. The project leading to this application has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 885026)”. This research note reports on the 1999–2019 Chapel Hill expert survey (CHES), which contains measures of national party positioning on European integration, ideology, and several European Union (EU) and non-EU policies for six waves of the survey, from 1999 to 2019. The trend file provides party position measures for all 28 EU countries and 1196 party-year observations. In this article, we analyze the evolving party positions on European integration from 1999 to 2019, with a particular focus on how EU positions are related to economic left right and the Green/Alternative/Libertarian-Traditional/Authoritarian/Nationalist dimension (GAL-TAN). The dataset is publicly available on the CHES website

International audience; Sovereignism is at the crux of the current wave of radical right-wing populism. Populist parties advocate ‘taking back control’ and generally do so in the name of the ‘people’, pledging to restore economic well-being. This article argues that populism and sovereignism are inherently connected in radical right-wing populism politics through a set of values that emphasize popular and national sovereignty. To test the empirical validity of our proposition, we focus on two established European radical right-wing populist parties, namely the Rassemblement National in France and the Swiss People’s Party and use data from an original survey. We find that while Rassemblement National and Swiss People’s Party voters diverge in general economic orientations, they share similar economic populist sovereignist values that significantly shape electoral support for those parties. These findings suggest that economic populist sovereignism may represent an important driver of support for the radical right-wing populism, alongside other correlates of radical right-wing populism voting, such as perceived immigration threat.

First Published December 8, 2021 The role of the symbolic is often overlooked in the public policy literature. Yet, it is a key component of public action, particularly in crisis management. During the Covid-19 pandemic, all democratic states needed to carry out cognitive and emotional work to persuade their citizens to show solidarity and comply with heavy restrictions. The near-simultaneous occurrence of the pandemic’s first wave (March–May 2020) allows us to compare the patterns of symbolic crisis management across four European countries (France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom). Our analysis finds significant variation in governments’ usage of the symbolic. We analyse leaders’ performances (wordcraft and stagecraft) as they try to reassure citizens, unite the nation, and legitimise themselves and their decisions. Our article shows not only that national leaders pay great attention to the symbolic in the management of crises, but also that their performances differ systematically in line with their personas and distinct national political cultures.

The research question of this article is to what extent have populist governments in Austria, Italy and Poland affected the bureaucratic autonomy of career diplomats? The starting hypothesis is that populist governments have a structural conflict with career diplomacy and are tempted to reduce their power through political capture. The case studies of populist governments are as follows: in Austria, the coalition between the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) and the Christian-Democratic Austrian People’s Party (OVP) between and December 2017 and May 2019; in Italy, the coalition between the two populist parties Five Stars Movement (M5S) and the League (La Lega) between June 2018 and September 2019; in Poland, the national-conservative coalition in which the Law and Justice Party (PiS) is dominant since October 2015. The first part explains why there is a structural conflict between populist governments and career diplomats. The second part analyses the case of a successful political capture of career diplomats by a populist government in Poland. The third part contrasts the previous statement by showing the lack of political capture of career diplomats by populist governments in Austria and Italy. Finally, the fourth part demonstrates why in the case of populist governments at power, career diplomats are often seen as an insurance to international partners, that populist governments themselves may have an interest in considering positively.

International audience

International audience; This paper aims at testing whether there exist spending interactions between French municipalities by estimating a dynamic panel data model. Our results suggest that there are some interactions between neighbouring municipalities as regards primary and investment expenditures. A positive relationship between municipalities' wage bill and unemployment rates is likely to stress a rise of temporary employment in those municipalities that suffer from social troubles. Further, the estimation results show that these interdependences also exist between cities whose mayors have the same partisan affiliation. Finally, our results confirm the opportunistic behaviour of local governments, which increase all categories of public spending in pre-electoral periods.

We offer a series of reflective insights about the state and direction of studies related to the politics of regulation. Notably we argue that the field is characterized by persisting divisions between Americanists and Europeanists. Largely focused on the actions taken by political principals, the former regularly report a substantial politicization of regulatory behavior. Reflecting on recent developments in US politics however, we show that political influence could be overestimated in the United States. Symmetrically, this same influence could be underestimated by Europeanists, who for now have largely focused on regulators and agencies. This is notably suggested by a discussion of recent development in European politics, as revealed by contributions systematically measuring agency politicization in Western European democracies. On this basis, we identify some promising research questions and agendas for future studies on the politics of regulation.

There is perennial debate in comparative politics about electoral institutions, but what characterizes this debate is the lack of consideration for citizens’ perspective. In this paper, we report the results of an original survey conducted on representative samples in 15 West European countries ( N = 15,414). We implemented an original instrument to elicit respondents’ views by asking them to rate “real but blind” electoral outcomes. With this survey instrument, we aimed to elicit principled rather than partisan preferences regarding the kind of electoral outcomes that citizens think is good for democracy. We find that West Europeans do not clearly endorse a majoritarian or proportional vision of democracy. They tend to focus on aspects of the government rather than parliament when they pass a judgment. They want a majority government that has few parties and enjoys wide popular support. Finally, we find only small differences between citizens of different countries., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

International audience

Le marche du risque sante en France connait depuis une trentaine d’annees un vaste mouvement d’europeanisation. Dans les annees 1990, une premiere serie de directives remanie les relations entre les acteurs (mutuelles, institutions de prevoyance et societes d’assurance). En 2016, l’entree en vigueur de la directive Solvabilite II s’accompagne de nouvelles exigences reglementaires. Pourtant, et pendant la meme periode, une serie de mesures adoptees a l’echelon national a renforce la presence de l’Etat dans ses activites. Il en ressort une situation paradoxale : d’un cote, les principaux assureurs sante en France sont certainement plus europeanises qu’auparavant mais, d’un autre cote, les politiques nationales pesent de facon croissante sur leurs activites.

This paper brings memory and migration studies together. It focuses on the way the past was used in the context of the ‘refugee crisis’ in Germany in 2015/2016. The analysis concentrates on how politicians and journalists used the memory of Germans’ own migrations to legitimise rhetorically the political decision to open the borders and let more than a million people into the country, as well as to call for a welcoming attitude (Willkommenskultur) towards the refugees. It shows how, by doing so, they have contributed to the reframing of one of the founding identity narratives of the FRG, namely the one about ‘flight and expulsion’, and thus helped to redraw Germany’s identity boundaries in a more inclusive way.

The strengthening of the populist radical right poses an important challenge for European integration. This article explores whether democratic backsliding among member states has acted as a catalyst for broader PRR cooperation at the EU level. Studying the co-sponsorship and contents of parliamentary questions and roll-call vote cohesion of PRR representatives in the European Parliament from 2009 to 2019, we examine the extent and substance of their joint polity-based contestation of European integration. Our findings indicate that overall levels of PRR cooperation remain low and concentrated within European party groups, suggesting that ideological divergences between PRR actors and their institutional fragmentation within the EP still hamper their formal cooperation at the European level. These insights feed into debates on the potential and limitations of transnational cooperation of PRR actors., Journal of European Public Policy, 30 (1), ISSN:1350-1763, ISSN:1466-4429

In the 1970s, the Soviet journalist and writer Aleksandr Prokhanov (born 1938) sought to initiate a new literary aesthetic based on a syncretic vision of technology and spirituality. While he represented an isolated position in conservative circles during the Soviet Union, his enthusiasm for technological modernity is now commonplace among contemporary Russian conservatives. Prokhanov has managed to evolve from the position of a fringe ideologue at the margins of the public sphere in the 1990s to a public figure whose ideas are circulated on state mass media and co-opted by political authorities since the late 2000s. This article studies the formation and circulation of Prokhanov’s reactionary modernism across the transition from the Soviet Union to post-Soviet Russia. It claims that Prokhanov’s hybrid ideology stems from his dual commitment to an anticonformist intellectual background and a loyalist state patriotism. It argues that, on top of his ability to popularize extremist ideas through their literary aestheticization, Prokhanov has successfully developed the resources of an ideological entrepreneur with leadership capacity and charismatic authority among anti-liberal milieus. In the 2000s, his discourse gained legitimacy, strategic utility and public visibility when these capacities matched a shift in the cultural and political contexts brought about by Vladimir Putin’s presidency.

The dilemmas of the French armies in the Sahel. A perspective on the debates on the transformation of Operation Barkhane -- In June 2021, President Emmanuel Macron announced the transformation of the French military operation in the Sahel. As the security situation in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger struggles to improve, the question of the sustainability of French military presence is being raised more and more insistently within national governments—and in academia. By examining the ways in which this debate was handled by French institutional actors (officers, diplomats, civil administrators, and political representatives), the study highlights the persistence of three dilemmas that more broadly structure all considerations regarding French military policy since the early days of independence. The study is based on a series of interviews with senior officers in Paris, supplemented by a six-month stay in the French embassy in Niger and by work on French diplomatic and military archives.; En juin 2021, le président Emmanuel Macron annonçait la transformation du dispositif engagé au Sahel. Alors que la situation sécuritaire peine à s’améliorer au Mali, au Burkina Faso et au Niger, la question de la soutenabilité de la présence militaire française est posée de plus en plus frontalement au sein des administrations et dans le champ académique. En revenant sur la manière dont ce débat a été investi par les acteurs institutionnels français (officiers, diplomates, administrateurs civils, représentants politiques), l’étude met en lumière la persistance de trois dilemmes qui structurent plus largement l’ensemble des réflexions sur la politique militaire française depuis les premières heures des indépendances.

What explains far-right mobilisation in the protest arena? After decades of growing electoral support and policy influence, the far right is experiencing an increase in grassroots mobilisation. Scholars of social movements and political parties have devoted little attention to the determinants of far-right protest mobilisation in Europe. In this article, we bridge previous research on the far right and social movements to advance hypotheses on the drivers of far-right protest mobilisation based on grievances, opportunities and resource mobilisation models. We use an original dataset combining novel data on 4,845 far-right protest events in 11 East and West European countries (2008–2018), with existing measures accounting for the (political, economic and cultural) context of mobilisation. We find that classical approaches to collective action can be fruitfully applied to the study of the far right. Cultural grievances, notably concerns about immigration, as well as the availability of institutional access points in contexts characterised by divided government increase far-right protest mobilisation. But far-right protest mobilisation also rests on the organisational resources available to nativist collective actors, that is, the network in which they are embedded, their visibility in the media and elected officials. These findings have important implications to understand far-right success in advanced democracies. They show that far-right mobilisation in the protest arena not only rests on favourable circumstances, but also on whether far-right actors can profit from them. More broadly, the study links party politics and social movement research to grasp the far right's modes of political contestation, locating research on this phenomenon at the intersection of political sociology and comparative politics. What explains far-right mobilisation in the protest arena? After decades of growing electoral support and policy influence, the far right is experiencing an increase in grassroots mobilisation. Scholars of social movements and political parties have devoted little attention to the determinants of far-right protest mobilisation in Europe. In this article, we bridge previous research on the far right and social movements to advance hypotheses on the drivers of far-right protest mobilisation based on grievances, opportunities and resource mobilisation models. We use an original dataset combining novel data on 4,845 far-right protest events in 11 East and West European countries (2008–2018), with existing measures accounting for the (political, economic and cultural) context of mobilisation. We find that classical approaches to collective action can be fruitfully applied to the study of the far right. Cultural grievances, notably concerns about immigration, as well as the availability of institutional access points in contexts characterised by divided government increase far-right protest mobilisation. But far-right protest mobilisation also rests on the organisational resources available to nativist collective actors, that is, the network in which they are embedded, their visibility in the media and elected officials. These findings have important implications to understand far-right success in advanced democracies. They show that far-right mobilisation in the protest arena not only rests on favourable circumstances, but also on whether far-right actors can profit from them. More broadly, the study links party politics and social movement research to grasp the far right's modes of political contestation, locating research on this phenomenon at the intersection of political sociology and comparative politics.

Independent regulatory agency has become the standard institutional choice in Western Europe. Little is known, however, about the involvement of legislators in their design and in their monitoring. In this paper, we analyse ex-ante and ex-post legislative involvement for 48 regulatory agencies enacted in France. We show that legislators debate and design more substantially agencies for which the government bill has already granted them more powers to appoint members to their board, or to be appointed as board members themselves. Once enacted, agencies that allow greater participation by legislators in their decision-making are subject to greater scrutiny, and this even after controlling for routine oversight activities. Regulatory domains matter, though only for ex-post legislative oversight. These results suggest that legislative involvement is selective and driven by strategic considerations. More fundamentally, they imply that legislative involvement could be more important in regulatory agency activities than usually assumed.

International audience; Laws not only affect behavior due to changes in material payoffs, but they may also change the perception individuals have of social norms, either by shifting them directly or by providing information on these norms. Using detailed daily survey data and exploiting the introduction of lockdown measures in the UK in the context of the COVID-19 health crisis, we provide causal evidence that the law drastically changed the perception of the norms regarding social distancing behaviors. We show that this effect of laws on perceived norms is mostly driven by an informational channel and that the intervention made perceptions of social norms converge to the actual prevalent norm.

During the time of bipolarity, the notion of regional power merged with that of middle power, suggesting a limited international capacity controlled by the game of superpowers and disposing of a rather weak autonomy of action. Today, the situation has substantially changed: one of the paradoxes of globalization is that it has strengthened the influence of local actors and emancipated them from their former tutors. At the same time, the fall of the Berlin Wall has opened the regional powers of yesterday to the international sphere. Ultimately, the transformation of conflicts and their increasingly social foundation transforms proximity in resources: regional powers are obviously more and more involved in the conflict systems that border or involve them. The Middle East is thus becoming a remarkable field for the regionalization of powers to be achieved: states that used to be mere allies or marginal groups, are now seeking recognition, then proactivity and finally participation in the solution of conflicts. This triple initiative marks the diplomacies of Turkey and Iran but also that of Saudi Arabia and, depending on the circumstances, others too. Having understood this, Russia has scored points in the region, while the Westerners have been losing considerable advantages trying to counter it.

Soon to be a century old, the Republic of Turkey has faced several major crises in its regional environment; however, none of them has affected it to the same extent as the Syrian conflict, which still continues to be the major concern for the current political power. Indeed, as a country close and similar to Turkey in many respects, Syria, via its crisis, has had a transformative effect on Turkey, that changes its identity, its ethnic and religious composition and, of course, its foreign policy, and even its place in the international order. The main objective of this chapter is to demonstrate that it is through the Syrian crisis that Turkey is marking a real break with its traditional geopolitical family, i.e., the Western camp, to move closer to a Russia that is historically anything but Turkey’s friend.

International audience; This article delivers the first post-Cold War history of how France – the European power with the largest political-military footprint in the Asia-Pacific – has responded to the national security challenges posed by the rise of China. Based upon a unique body of primary sources (80 interviews conducted in Europe, the Asia-Pacific and the United States; declassified archival documents; and leaked diplomatic cables), it shows that China’s growing assertiveness after 2009 (and national policymakers’ perceptions thereof) has been the key driver of change in French security policy in the region, pulling France strategically into the Asia-Pacific. Specifically, growing threat perceptions of China’s rise – coupled with steadily rising regional economic interests – have led Paris to forge a cohesive policy framework, the Indo-Pacific strategy, and to bolster the political-military dimension of its regional presence. By investigating this key yet neglected dimension of French and European security policies, and by leveraging a unique body of primary written and oral sources, this study fills an important gap in the scholarly literature on both European and Asia-Pacific security dynamics. The findings of this article also shed new light on the political and military assets that France can bring to bear in the formulation of a common EU security policy toward the Asia-Pacific and on the implications thereof for the prospect of a transatlantic strategy vis-à-vis China.

How will the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) shape the broader pursuit of nuclear abolition? TPNW critics have argued that the new agreement is likely to fuel divisions between nuclear and non-nuclear-weapon sates, undermining consensus and hampering existing efforts at reducing and eliminating nuclear arms. In this commentary, I argue that one of the TPNW’s key strengths and contributions is precisely that it pierces the feigned abolitionist consensus, creating room for adversarial politics and the advancement of an alternative view of nuclear order and security

International audience; This article complements analyses of the partisan politicization of the European Parliament from roll-call votes with an analysis of political groups' use of parliamentary questions. Questions offer an institutional opening for issue politicization and for partisan differentiation. Parliamentary groups have incentives to shape EU policies by drawing the attention to their topics of predilection and by controlling ongoing action. We make use of a new dataset on questions for oral answer (2004–19) to test if this results in European party groups emphasizing differentiated topics in their questions to the Commission and the Council. Our analyses confirm groups' differentiated issue attention. These findings have important implications for understanding the partisan politicization of EU policies and confirming the truly political nature of deliberation in the EP. They reveal patterns of partisan opposition different from those expressed in votes and emphasize the relevance of parliamentary questions as a key institutional window for politicization.

International audience; How was the Saudi monarchy able to stave off the Arab Spring? One answer to this question lies in migration politics, which are integral to the regime’s ad hoc survival strategies. An analysis of migration politics, moreover, brings to light longstanding dynamics of state transformation in what remains one of the largest immigration countries in the world. Drawing on discourse analysis, institutional history, and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in state bureaucracies, I explore the critical, albeit under-researched, role of migration politics in political change from the 1991 Gulf crisis to the 2011 uprisings. First, I show that, in times of crisis, Saudi monarchs made migration a central political issue: while maintaining mass immigration into the country, they used immigrants as scapegoats to deflect popular grievances and further individual power-seeking agendas. Secondly, I demonstrate that migration became a policy domain with its own rules, bureaucratic practices, power relations and rationalities – a process designed to impose a state monopoly over migration control. Thirdly, I introduce the notion of ‘migration rent’ and use it to describe the changing social and power relations between migrants, citizens and the state. Finally, I suggest that migration politics are key to understanding both short- and long-term political change.

The performance of ritual and the ritualisation of performance are the two main theoretical repertoires of ritual study in international politics and beyond. However, they also escalate tensions between those who insist on ritual's ability to operate by virtue of participants’ presence and those who believe that global networks of media call for a representational turn, which must tie participants and audiences across borders. Should we fail to understand how these distinct theoretical repertoires interact, it would be difficult to study international ritual, identify its functions, and trace its effects. Anchored in the sociology of ‘social occasions’, this article weaves ritual's patterns, properties, and resources into a coherent analytical framework. The framework enables us to better to grasp how actors move between/within different worlds (ritual and performance) and to what effects. The comparative study of two post-terrorism ritual occasions (the 2011 Rose March in Oslo and the 2015 Republican Marches in France) illustrates the usefulness of this theoretical proposition and its related framework.

Cet article retrace le cheminement intellectuel qui a conduit, moins spontanément qu’on ne pourrait le croire, Christine Musselin à faire sa thèse puis à devenir chercheuse au Centre de Sociologie des Organisations, et à consacrer ses recherches à l’étude comparative des systèmes d’enseignement supérieur à travers la gouvernance des universités, les politiques universitaires et les marchés du travail universitaires, mêlant ainsi sociologie des organisations, analyse des politiques publiques et sociologie économique. Il montre comment l’étude de la coopération a été le fil rouge de ses travaux, et l’analyse sociologique des organisations, basée sur les entretiens organisationnels, une méthode heuristique pour la plupart des enquêtes qu’elle a menées.

This article examines public contestation of Europe by the far right in France. It investigates whether far-right mobilization on the EU has changed over time, and how it diverges in the party and non-party sectors. Specifically, we follow a politicization approach and address mobilization in terms of three interrelated dimensions: intensity, issue focus, and action repertoire. This allows comparing collective action in the electoral and protest arenas, thus assessing how the far right politicizes Europe in public debates. The study relies on a mixed quantitative and qualitative analysis of the content of the press releases posted by far-right parties and movements on their official websites, scraped automatically from 2012 to 2019. The results show that European integration is increasingly at the core of far-right politics in France, but its politicization unfolds in different ways in the protest and electoral arenas. As political conflict over the EU expands, far-right parties and non-party actors are challenged to differentiate their respective profiles. These findings complement existing research on the linkages between protest and elections, and suggest that the rooting of the far right in society is reconfiguring the structure of political conflict in Europe.

The article highlights the epistemological privilege of observation in social contexts marked by armed violence and disorder. Faced with these situations, researchers have sometimes considered that their work begins once the conflicts have stabilized, thus favouring archives (written or oral) and secondary sources over observation and interviews collected in context. Despite the difficulties it poses, however, investigation in context offers the researcher, through a sometimes-brutal confrontation with exceptional situations, the possibility of greater theoretical creativity by opening to new objects and new research questions. In return, such research requires a more reactive modality of theoretical elaboration, with a constant reciprocal interaction between hypotheses and data production. Rather than developing these themes in an abstract way, we return to the investigation we conducted on the Syrian conflict. We analyse in particular the difficulties of access, the risks of selection bias, the problems associated with remote research and subcontracting of data production, and the advantages of conducting collective fieldwork. Le privilège épistémologique du terrain. Une enquête collective dans la Syrie en guerre -- L’article souligne le privilège épistémologique de l’observation dans les contextes sociaux marqués par la violence armée et le désordre. Confrontés à ces situations, les chercheurs ont parfois considéré que leur travail commençait une fois celles-ci stabilisées, privilégiant ainsi l’archive (écrite ou orale) et les sources secondaires à l’observation et aux paroles recueillies en contexte. Malgré les difficultés qu’elle pose, l’enquête en contexte offre cependant au chercheur, par une confrontation parfois brutale avec des situations exceptionnelles, la possibilité d’une plus grande inventivité théorique en s’ouvrant à de nouveaux objets et de nouvelles questions de recherche. En retour, les enquêtes obligent à une modalité plus réactive de l’élaboration théorique, avec une interaction permanente entre les hypothèses et la production des données. Plutôt que de développer ces thèmes de façon abstraite, les auteurs reviennent sur l’enquête qu’ils ont menée sur le conflit syrien en analysant notamment les difficultés d’accès, les risques d’enclicage, les problèmes associés au travail à distance et à la sous-traitance de la production de données et les avantages de conduire un terrain à plusieurs.

Many parties have updated their recruitment strategies and offer softer routes for joining their ranks. In some parties, registered sympathizers are given virtually the same rights as traditional members with substantially lower costs. This begs the question, why would somebody take the further step of joining such parties as full members rather than sympathizers? This article analyzes this question by using membership surveys from three left-wing Spanish parties. As such, it explores the usefulness of the general incentives model (GIM) for explaining the decisions of these two groups of affiliates. We find that full members and sympathizers differ in the motives they have to join the party and in their evaluations of the diverse types of incentives included in the GIM. Candidate selection incentives seem particularly important for sympathizers, whereas selective outcome incentives, selective process benefits, collective outcome benefits and altruistic motivations play a more significant role for members.

International audience; Four institutional features such as confidence vote, electoral system, candidate nomination, and decree power can affect the degree of party discipline in France. Other than four institutional factors, this chapter also asserts that three contextual factors such as the popular support for the president, the ideological cohesiveness of the majority, and the majority micromanagement can affect the president’s ability to steer the legislative agenda. In France, the majority of presidents have experienced defections of partisan members who have different preferences or stances in conflict with theirs.; Cette contribution étudie les logiques du soutien de la majorité parlementaire aux projets législatifs impulsés par le président de la République en France. Ce soutien est important mais tend néanmoins à décroitre au fils des décennies. Il se fonde tant sur des logiques structurelles, de règles constitutionnelles et électorales, que sur des facteurs contextuels dont la qualité du management du groupe majoritaire par l’exécutif.