"Old divides, recent approaches, future bridges: Studying European economic and social policy"

Ebbinghaus, Bernhard and Fioretos, Karl-Orfeo. (1997) "Old divides, recent approaches, future bridges: Studying European economic and social policy". In: UNSPECIFIED, Seattle, WA. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

In this paper, our ambition is to contribute to the integration of the international and comparative perspectives in the context of EU studies. However, we extend the former discipline to include both contemporary research in international political economy (IPE) and classic European integration theory, and extend the latter discipline beyond comparative politics to include insights from comparative sociology. By combining these perspectives we go beyond old divides in EU studies to provide some suggestions as to where new bridges can be fruitfully built and where they are likely to be strong and lasting. While making use of the existing literature on European integration, we are primarily concerned with ascertaining the value of a number of contributions outside the study of Euro-politics which we think can play pivotal roles in bridging conceptual divides in EU studies, as well as more generally between the international and comparative perspectives. Our primary observation is that there are a number of intellectual affinities between contemporary comparative politics and sociology of advanced capitalist countries and contemporary IPE which have rarely been explored in EU studies, and which can be fruitfully exploited to create richer and theoretically more rigorous accounts of Euro-politics.

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