ECPR 2020 General Conference: Advancing field analysis in European integration studies

Panel at the ECPR General Conference, 26-28 August, 2020, see https://ecpr.eu/Events/Event/PanelDetails/10170

Convenors: Amelie Kutter (European University Viadrina) & Christian Schmidt-Wellenburg (University of Potsdam)

Discussant: Niilo Kauppi (University of Helsinki)

Contributors: Didier Bigo (Sciences Po Paris), Amelie Kutter (European University Viadrina), Tomas Martilla (Vienna University of Economics and Business), Christian Schmidt-Wellenburg (University of Potsdam)

European integration has deeply restructured public policy making in Europe, with procedures and capacities being re-arranged in line with EU agendas and legislations. Field-theoretical approaches, which are situated in second generation of practice theory, provide conceptual frames for studying the formation and functioning of such spaces of EU-related interaction, highlighting their symbolic-relational constitution. They have been used, for instance, for investigating scaled political competition (Kauppi 2003, 2018), the formation of transnational and EU-related expertise (Bernhard & Schmidt-Wellenburg 2020, Kauppi & Madsen 2013) and expertise in EU statecraft (Georgakakis & Rowell 2013), EU security (Bigo, 2007, 2017), EU intergovernmental diplomacy (Adler-Nissen 2014), or EU multilateral negotiation and mediatised political communication (Kutter 2020). Contributions in this panel consider how field analysis can be advanced as a research programme in European integration studies. We welcome papers that explore further realms of Europeanised policy making through the lens of field analysis and extend field analysis into new theoretical terrains, such as other strands of practice theory or discourse analysis.