Suchergebnisse

European Civil Service in (Times of) Crisis -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- 1 Introduction: Moving Pictures -- Another Crisis -- The Politics of Forming a European Body -- Studying a Changing Power -- Outline -- 2 A Contested Identity: Genesis of the Eurocrat Figure - Between Stigma and Affirmation of a Differentiated Supranational Body -- Denouncing the Eurocrats and Institutionalizing 'Resistances' to Supranationality -- Reflection of a Risk -- An Instrument to Open Political Opportunities -- European Oracles Versus European Technocrats -- On the Euro-Functionary Side:Inverting the Stigma and Stylizing the Group -- Eurocracy in Practice -- Eurocracy as a Style -- 3 The Making of a Status Group: Reconsidering Socialization to the European Institutions -- A Status Group, or European Civil Servants as a Social Group -- Institutional Production of a Social Position -- Institutional Production of an Ethos of European Public Service -- Why Habitus Matters or What It Means to Become 'European' -- 4 Genesis and Structure of European Bureaucratic Capital: Senior European Commission Officials -- Genesis of a European Institutional Capital -- Building a Body and Denationalizing the Habitus -- A Compliant Morphology -- Differentiation of Specific Symbolic Capital -- The Space of Senior European Civil Service and Distribution of Institutional Capital -- The Commission as a Bipolar Social Structure -- Trend Inversion in the Hierarchies -- Weight within the Structure and Personal Inclination -- Methodological Appendix -- Calculated Variables -- Indicators of Career Prior to Appointment -- Principal Component Analysis (PCA) -- PCA Standard Data -- Factorial Design -- Illustrative variables -- Classification -- 5 Soft Skills Versus Expertise and Knowledge: The Changing Core Competencies of European Civil Servants

"This article elaborates on the concept of technocrat, contrasting it with that of a bureaucrat. The impact of the 'Delors heritage' on the administrative culture of the Commission contributed to the perceived politicisation of the Commission that gave way to a 'shifting definition of European administrative excellence' in which 'fundamental skills... [became] subordinated to managerial skills'. A more conservative culture arose that discouraged risk-taking, perhaps explaining the declining leadership role of the Commission." (contract)

Essay in a symposium on "A Different Reading of the International": Pierre Bourdieu and International Studies. The author discusses the movement toward a systematic analysis of the EU institutions as a social field, both empirically grounded by the sociology of the people working in and with EU institutions and theoretically informed by a Bourdieusian inspired sociology of field. Adapted from the source document.

waiting for referee in an international review ; Founded on an analysis of biographies and carriers of top-rank officials and members of the European Commission, this paper suggest that a lot of recent polemic within the EU Institutions (such as Verheugen controversy, Kinnock reform, etc.) are the expressions of the tensions originating from socio-morphological transformations. To put it simply, the gap between the members and the officials of the Commission has never been so wide on this score. Commissioners seem to be gaining in political capitals to the detriment of a professional commitment in European politics, which implies for example a minimum degree of attendance in the political space of the EU or the accumulation of capitals relating to this space. Conversely, the top-level officials increasingly appear to owe their positions to long-term investment in institutions involving the production and, simultaneously, the accumulation of European capitals, a general tendency whereof the meaning is precisely questioned within the conjuncture of the Kinnock reform and more widely that of the political issues which characterised the mid 2000s. Beyond the conventional issue of the differentiation or de-differentiation processes of the political and administrative elites, this approach enables to underline the unique relationship between these staff categories in the case of the EU and to point out, to a greater extent, an opposition between temporary and intermittent EU elites and staff which seems to be a correct indicator of the specific and inequal objectivation process of the European institutions.

Since fifteen years scholars have a huge debate on the European officials "common culture". However this debate tend to ignore some questions that should be at the heart of the reflections on power in the Union. What are the conditions of production and interiorization of this "common culture" ? What are the links between this culture and the European officials ability to embody the Community interest ? What are the condition of the relative success of this operation and how is this ability distributed ? In order to answer these questions this paper, founded on an empirical survey at work, promote to analyse the socio-political processes of the group construction. After a fist part on the framework of analysis, the second part give some tracks on the objectivation of European official as group and conditions of his incorporated history.

This article provides an overview of the hundred or so papers in historical and political sociology of the EU published in France over the last two years (particularly around the sociology of knowledge and sociology of trajectories and positions of the social agents and groups who make up the European political space), and analyses some of their contributions to the international debate, focusing notably on the central political and institutional space of the EU.