Who Governs? EU Elites and Bureaucratic Transformations

For the last fifteen years, there have been many studies on those who “govern Europe.” From transnational elites to professionals building Europe locally through projects. A number of individuals and groups have been under scrutiny by scholars from different disciplines (politics, anthropology, sociology, history) using different methods from ethnography to quantitative studies. Can we take stock of this line of research and its contribution to studies of European integration? This section seeks to bring together scholars aspiring to reflexivity on the advantage, limits and further development of perspectives focusing on social actors and groups. The goal of this section is to build on the implications of previous research in this sub-field to understand the challenges that Europe faces. The section seeks panels and paper proposals on diplomats involved in the Brexit negotiations, or recent trade agreements, on those involved in developing a new common defense orientation or a new European economic policy compromise. We are also interested in how world and European elites position themselves toward the EU in the context of Trump presidency and Brexit, but also after major elections in various continental countries. What do we know about the various mediators contributing to represent the EU across Europe and beyond? To what extent does the European crises also change the intellectual transnational field or restructure national fields of production of ideas on Europe? Proposals linking individuals and groups with institutional change are also welcome. For instance, what has a supposedly politized Commission, or at least a Commission with a new political agenda since Junker, changed in terms of the socio-morphological transformations and distribution of position and power inside European bureaucracies. Conversely how do the changes observed in European bureaucracies and personnel for the last ten years or so impact on politics and policy and affect the room for maneuver of EU elites in areas such as the environment, energy, or social affairs? The perspectives on actors who govern Europe require a common reflexivity on the different perspectives composing this subfield from an epistemological and methodological point of view. The transatlantic debate on field theories with different presuppositions are a part of this endeavor: what are their implications as to the study of EU actors and their partner/competitor (third countries, IO, etc.) over the definition of European orientations? The implicit ontology contained in methods used to study individuals (network analysis, Multiple Correspondence analysis, questionnaires on preferences, ethnography) also deserves discussion.