How to Analyse a Supranational Regime That Nationalises Social Conflict?

Why Do some Labour Alliances Succeed in Politicizing Europe across Borders? A Comparison of the Right2Water and Fair Transport European Citizens' Initiatives

“…However, we must also assess the structural conditions that have influenced the two campaigns. Here, we focus especially on–vertical and horizontal (Erne, 2019)–EU integration pressures that workers were facing, given the unequal spread of the liberalization agenda in these two sectors (Leiren, 2015; Crespy, 2016; Golden et al ., 2021).…”

“…Furthermore, horizontal integration does not question social actors' formal autonomy, but rather triggers competitive tensions between them. By contrast, vertical integration provides tangible opponents and formally aims to ‘undermine social actors’ and local and national institutions' autonomy’ (Erne, 2019, p. 347). Vertical interventions are easier to politicize, albeit within a limited timeframe, as the impact of vertical intervention (for instance in the case of liberalizing EU legislation) increases horizontal competition in the medium and long term.…”

“…Correspondingly, studies on EU politicization tend to follow a procedure that relies on data collection about individual attitudes or protest events reported in national media and then interprets them in the context of specific member states. This approach, while yielding large datasets and valid cross‐country comparisons, leaves us with an insufficient understanding of EU politicization because it systematically underplays the importance of interest groups and social movements in transnational EU politicization processes (Zürn, 2016; Erne, 2019).…”

“…In terms of agency, EPSU was acting as the centre of a social movement coalition built around the defence of public services (Della Porta and Caiani, 2009; Della Porta, 2015; Parks, 2015). Structurally, the sectors in which the two ETUFs are active face different–vertical or horizontal–European integration pressures (Erne, 2019). After the earlier vertical EU laws liberalizing one transport modality after another (Héritier, 1997), horizontal market integration pressures now dominate the transport sector.…”

Towards a Socialization of the EU's New Economic Governance Regime? EU Labour Policy Interventions in Germany, Ireland, Italy and Romania (2009–2019)

“…As it stands, there is simply no attempt to understand, let alone explain, why a specific set of policy prescriptions may be targeted at a specific member‐state at a given point in time, in relation to both their national and the broader European political and economic context, and therefore how this should be factored into our assessment of whether the Semester is becoming socialized or not. Therefore, below, we analyse Semester policy recommendations only in relation to a set of four member‐states as opposed to all 28, but in much more depth; as the analysis of the transnational dynamics that are at work here requires a deep knowledge of the affected member‐states and the corresponding language skills (Almond and Connolly 2019; Erne 2018, 2019). Our ‘multi‐sited’ set of inquiry (Marcus 1995) thus includes the EU‐level, two larger countries (Germany and Italy) and two smaller ones (Ireland and Romania) that we know very well.…”