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The EU may get more politicized (in the sense of salience, polarization and extension of actors, see de Wilde and Zürn, 2012; de Wilde, Leupold and Schmidtke, 2016) but also, and mostly, acts as an agent of depoliticization, along with other institutions at the EU and domestic level (Hay, 2007; Papadopoulos, 2013; Wood and Flinders, 2014). We suggest to go one step further than the existing literature that suggests that economic voting may be decreasing in times of globalization (Hellwig, 2008; Lobo and Lewis-Beck, 2012) or that citizens are increasingly aware of their government's limited autonomy when facing external constraints (Ruiz Rufino and Alonso, 2017). This paper argues that EU policy, in particular in the social and economic realms, its media coverage at the national level and national politicians' usages of Europe, depoliticize economic and social issues. Specifically, EU policy preferred options are framed not only as being beyond the reach of national governments and politicians, but also, and more importantly, without alternative (Dupuy and Van Ingelgom, 2015; Karremans, 2017). While denying choice, these depoliticized policies, in return, feedback citizens' attitudes toward politics in general. This paper therefore intends to bring in (EU) public policy in the analysis of citizens' disaffection towards politics in contemporary Western Europe. At the most general level, it contends that citizens' growing disregard for politics is partly an outcome of policy changes and changes in state structures and administrations. Thereby, the paper articulates changes at the macro level to changes at the individual level.

Voters are growing increasingly disenchanted with politics—and democracy more generally. Scholars tend to explain this disaffection in terms of voter characteristics or attitudes—such as socioeconomic status or dissatisfaction with the political establishment. However, there is a gap in the literature concerning the effects of policy implementation on this key link between voters and their corresponding national political system. Welfare state retrenchment, largely in the form of neoliberal social and educational policies, has been a staple of European politics over the past forty years. Is there a causal relationship between the implementation of neoliberal social and educational policies and voter democratic disaffection? To answer this question we use data from the European Election Study from 1979, 1989, and 2004 to conduct a natural experiment. We investigate if—in analogous phases of policy implementation—democratic disaffection converges or diverges between France and the UK. This comparative analysis allows us to investigate arguments about how political institutional environments mediate the effects of neoliberal policy implementation (Fourcade and Babb 2002). Our study builds on and expands the comparative natural experimental design of Svallfors (2010) and helps to produce findings that meaningfully speak to the causal effects of neoliberal policy implementation on democratic disaffection within and between the UK and France.

Voters are growing increasingly disenchanted with politics—and democracy more generally. Scholars tend to explain this disaffection in terms of voter characteristics or attitudes—such as socioeconomic status or dissatisfaction with the political establishment. However, there is a gap in the literature concerning the effects of policy implementation on this key link between voters and their corresponding national political system. Welfare state retrenchment, largely in the form of neoliberal social and educational policies, has been a staple of European politics over the past forty years. Is there a causal relationship between the implementation of neoliberal social and educational policies and voter democratic disaffection? To answer this question we use data from the European Election Study from 1979, 1989, and 2004 to conduct a natural experiment. We investigate if—in analogous phases of policy implementation—democratic disaffection converges or diverges between France and the UK. This comparative analysis allows us to investigate arguments about how political institutional environments mediate the effects of neoliberal policy implementation (Fourcade and Babb 2002). Our study builds on and expands the comparative natural experimental design of Svallfors (2010) and helps to produce findings that meaningfully speak to the causal effects of neoliberal policy implementation on democratic disaffection within and between the UK and France.

Since January 2020, European countries have implemented a wide range of restrictions to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet governments have also implemented democratic compensators in order to offset the negative impacts of restrictions. This article aims to account for the variation of their use between Belgium, the Netherlands and France. We analyse three drivers: the strength of counterpowers, the ruling parties' ideological leanings and political support. Building on an original data set, our results distinguish between embedded and ad hoc compensators. We find that ad hoc compensators are championed mainly by counterpowers, but also by ideology of the ruling coalitions in Belgium and the Netherlands and used strategically to maintain political support in France. Evidence on the link between embedded compensators and counterpowers is more ambiguous.

Politicisation, in a broad and basic understanding, means to turn something – an issue, an institution, a policy – that previously was not a subject to political action into something that now is subject to political action. So far, most definitions of the concept would agree. But besides this basic approach, there is much discussion: Politicisation is a concept that is currently much used in the social sciences, and also a concept that is contested in its definitions and understandings. Several paths and subdisciplines contribute to the debate, but they are not necessarily connected to one another. Political theory or political economy discusses politicisation and also what can be termed the counter-concept, depoliticisation, theoretically and often with a normative background, whereas comparative politics and EU studies have increasingly taken to deliver empirical studies on the politicisation of the European Union. These latter studies most often rely on the indicators of salience, actor involvement and polarisation in and of political debates and processes. International Relations, last not least, increasingly discusses the politicisation of international politics and international organisations. ; peerReviewed

Politicisation, in a broad and basic understanding, means to turn something – an issue, an institution, a policy – that previously was not a subject to political action into something that now is subject to political action. So far, most definitions of the concept would agree. But besides this basic approach, there is much discussion: Politicisation is a concept that is currently much used in the social sciences, and also a concept that is contested in its definitions and understandings. Several paths and subdisciplines contribute to the debate, but they are not necessarily connected to one another. Political theory or political economy discusses politicisation and also what can be termed the counter-concept, depoliticisation, theoretically and often with a normative background, whereas comparative politics and EU studies have increasingly taken to deliver empirical studies on the politicisation of the European Union. These latter studies most often rely on the indicators of salience, actor involvement and polarisation in and of political debates and processes. International Relations, last not least, increasingly discusses the politicisation of international politics and nternational organisations. This is why the contributions in this Critical Exchange bring together differing strands of the debate and aim to rethink politicisation in both theoretical and empirical understandings and usages. Kari Palonen starts the exchange with an overview on historical usages of the concept. Claudia Wiesner follows with an approach to challenges and possible pathways of concept specification. Veith Selk discusses politicisation and its linkages to populism. Niilo Kauppi and Hans-Jörg Trenz, as well as Claire Dupuy and Virginie Van Ingelgom, critically regard the state of the art in studying EU politicisation and depoliticisation. Philip Liste closes with a discussion of the linkages between the concepts of juridification, depoliticisation, and politicisation in transnational politics. Taken together, the contributions raise a number of crucial issues in the academic debate on politicisation: the conception of politics and the political that politicisation relates to, its linkage to depoliticisation and juridification, and the relation of politicisation and populism.

Politicisation, in a broad and basic understanding, means to turn something – an issue, an institution, a policy – that previously was not a subject to political action into something that now is subject to political action. So far, most definitions of the concept would agree. But besides this basic approach, there is much discussion: Politicisation is a concept that is currently much used in the social sciences, and also a concept that is contested in its definitions and understandings. Several paths and subdisciplines contribute to the debate, but they are not necessarily connected to one another. Political theory or political economy discusses politicisation and also what can be termed the counter-concept, depoliticisation, theoretically and often with a normative background, whereas comparative politics and EU studies have increasingly taken to deliver empirical studies on the politicisation of the European Union. These latter studies most often rely on the indicators of salience, actor involvement and polarisation in and of political debates and processes. International Relations, last not least, increasingly discusses the politicisation of international politics and nternational organisations. This is why the contributions in this Critical Exchange bring together differing strands of the debate and aim to rethink politicisation in both theoretical and empirical understandings and usages. Kari Palonen starts the exchange with an overview on historical usages of the concept. Claudia Wiesner follows with an approach to challenges and possible pathways of concept specification. Veith Selk discusses politicisation and its linkages to populism. Niilo Kauppi and Hans-Jörg Trenz, as well as Claire Dupuy and Virginie Van Ingelgom, critically regard the state of the art in studying EU politicisation and depoliticisation. Philip Liste closes with a discussion of the linkages between the concepts of juridification, depoliticisation, and politicisation in transnational politics. Taken together, the contributions raise a number of crucial issues in the academic debate on politicisation: the conception of politics and the political that politicisation relates to, its linkage to depoliticisation and juridification, and the relation of politicisation and populism.

Qualitative secondary analysis has generated heated debate regarding the epistemology of qualitative research. We argue that shifting to an abductive approach provides a fruitful avenue for qualitative secondary analysts who are oriented towards theory-building. However, the concrete implementation of abduction remains underdeveloped—especially for coding. We address this key gap by outlining a set of tactics for abductive analysis that can be applied for qualitative analysis. Our approach applies Timmermans and Tavory's ( Timmermans and Tavory 2012 ; Tavory and Timmermans 2014 ) three stages of abduction in three steps for qualitative (secondary) analysis: Generating an Abductive Codebook, Abductive Data Reduction through Code Equations, and In-Depth Abductive Qualitative Analysis. A key contribution of our article is the development of "code equations"—defined as the combination of codes to operationalize phenomena that span individual codes. Code equations are an important resource for abduction and other qualitative approaches that leverage qualitative data to build theory.

Alors que la politisation de l'UE a été de plus en plus étudiée ces dernières années, l'analyse s'est principalement concentrée sur les partis politiques et les médias. Ainsi, les études de la politisation de l'UE chez les individus, sans être absentes, restent rares. Cet article présente un nouveau set de données qualitatives de 21 groupes de discussion dans quatre pays européens et avec des profils sociaux variés, permettant d'étudier les processus de (dé)politisation au niveau des citoyens, la manière dont ils parlent de l'UE et les clivages qui structurent leurs attitudes. Cette recherche comparative offre un nouvel éclairage sur les discours et les opinions sur l'Europe, les mécanismes de politisation et les discussions politiques.

Policy analysis in France lays the foundation for a more systematic understanding of policy analysis in the country. In doing so, the volume discusses the role of the State and its restructuring, processes of government and governance, and State-Society relationships and policies as both a process and an outcome. Through 18 chapters contributions focus on policymakers, their practices, ideas and discourses, how they engage in sustained relationships with a large variety of market and society actors, and the concrete devices they use in order to make policy objectives operational. This is a comprehensive study of policy analysis in France that will be valuable to academics and postgraduate students researching and studying a range of policy and public management areas