Fall and Rise: Normativity in Political Science Writing on the EU

Abstract

Sociologists of science emphasize the crucial role of the day-to-day practices of scholars in defining academic disciplines and epistemological schools. Taking the case of EU Studies (EUS), this article examines the key practice of normative writing. I analyze the degree to which 70 highly-cited journal articles of political science writing in EUS explicitly or implicitly suggest that European integration or its institutions or policies are bad or good, flourishing or declining. I use this discourse analysis, plus biographical data on the authors of texts, to explain a major temporal pattern. Degrees of normativity in EUS articles progressively declined from the 1970s until the millennium, but then subsequently recovered. Factors 'external' to scholarship, such as the progressive intensification of European integration and crises faced by the EU help explain this pattern. However they interacted in complex ways with 'internal' academic factors, such as generational replacement, 'mainstreaming' and rivalries between sub-disciplinary and theoretical camps.

Gerecht übersetzt? Eine sozialökologische Gerechtigeitsperspektive auf EU-Umweltgovernance und urbane Mobilitätstransformationen

“…Unlike the clear-cut operationalization of AAQ as an environmental problem, those justice norms are extremely complex and utterly ambiguous. Nevertheless, we argue they may not be omitted as part of a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics and effects of EU policymaking and governance (also see Mc Mahon 2018 ).…”

“…Sidelined and deemed “dissident” (Manners and Whitman 2016 ) by mainstream EU studies, alternative concepts of EU policymaking have been nurtured in other disciplinary debates such as international political sociology (Adler-Nissen and Kropp 2015 ) and environmental studies (Wagenaar 2015 ; Hajer 2003 ). Therefore, it is no coincidence that concepts of these disciplines and fields have recently been imported into EU studies, which has consequently undergone a vibrant and multi-faceted re-conceptualisation through self-reflection of its normative premises (Mc Mahon 2018 ).…”