Description - Transnational Power Elites by Niilo Kauppi
This book argues that European Union institutional mechanics and the EU as a political unit cannot be properly understood without taking into account the elites that make the policy decisions. The authors argue that one way of exploring these complex interrelations is to study European power elites, their trajectories and positions in a broader context, a European field of power and even a global field of power. The book suggests rethinking European integration from a starting-point of a set of basic sociological questions related to power, class and identity, and makes the rise of a set of powerful social groups -- European power elites -- the direct object of inquiry. The authors are interested in these elites with respect to the social consequences of their rise to dominance for the broader space of the EU in terms of a particular social figuration and for the global structuration of the EU -- i.e. the structuration of the EU as an interaction of internal and external processes.
The starting-point is that European integration and its product, the European Union, has now developed a set of broader social structures that are central for explaining the various dynamics of its development. In other words, European integration produces societal effects, which, conversely, should be studied as society, that is, in basic sociological terms and as a process of social structuration. Borrowing from classical sociology, the book opts for focusing on three elemental sociological issues -- power, class and identity -- in respect to the larger question of the power elites of the EU. It is our claim that stepping back from the day-to-day complexities of EU decision-making and integration processes and reposing these basic questions provides for developing a more fundamental understanding of European integration. This volume therefore also differs from existing sociologically inspired literature on European integration by its objective of going further in the introduction of sociology in the area of European studies than previous studies.
Essentially, we argue that the question of Europe can -- and should - be understood in societal terms rather than simply as a blend of institutions and high stakes politics as in mainstream European research. This book will be of much interest to students of EU studies, sociology, critical security studies, and IR in general.
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