Analysing European Politico-Economic Expertise from a Field Perspective: EU Economic Expert Groups 1966-2017

European Integration has been a project of economic integration right from the start and European institutions have sought expert advice on a wide range of economic issues ever since. In this process, one of EEC and later EU commission’s main instruments have been (high level) expert groups such as the Marjolin- (1975) and Delors- (1989), more recently the de-Larosière- (2009) and Liikanen-Group (2012). The paper sets out to trace the changing constitution of expertise and experts in economic governance and their changing uses in the developing and contested field of Eurocracy. A field analytical approach inspired by recent Bourdieusian research in international political sociology is used to analyse not only the expertise given in reports, but also the composition of expert groups. The paper draws on results from a prospopographical study comprising 272 members of 22 EEC/EU commission’s expert groups ranging from 1966 to 2017. Biographical and professional information collected from publicly accessible sources allows for reconstruction and comparison of the diverse (trans)national academic, business, bureaucratic and political contexts from which the experts stem. Multiple correspondence analysis and hierarchical agglomerative clustering are used to determine and visualize the main structures inherent to this space of expertise. Relational methods associated to geometric data analysis methodology are most suited to quantify transnational fields. They are aligned with the basic epistemological of field analysis and allow for a conscious and conscious objectification inspired by and complementing qualitative research. This enables us to understand who is perceived as expert on a certain subject at a certain moment in time and how his expertise is legitimated drawing on sources in and beyond European politics and politics in general. It lets us identify and interpret what is at stake in struggles over economic governance as well as over the definition of European politico-economic exerts. Researching these struggles allows us to shed light on how varying perceptions of the economy, its regulation and its relations to politics and society at large are constituted, who is seen as legitimate to produce statements on and engage in economic governance and what the relationships of the political and especially the nascent and establishing European political field are to other more or less national and transnational social fields. Varying sources and logics of authority can be identified and questions on professionalization of EU expertise, the changing influence of certain disciplinary, national, political and other backgrounds can be investigated. First results are than positioned within the rich and vast research on EU experts and professionals of recent years.