Amandine Crespy

Université Libre de Bruxelles | ULB · Department of Political Science

After the euro crisis, politicization patterns led the institutions of the European Union to gradually redirect the bloc's socioeconomic governance away from austerity. It is less clear whether the erosion of austerity was mirrored in national economic discourses. To fill this gap, this article provides a quantitative and qualitative analysis of pa...

Volume II examines the history of the European Union from an inside-out perspective, focusing on the internal developments that shaped the European integration process. Split into three parts, Part I covers the principles that have defined European integration, exploring the treaties and their changes through time, with Brexit being a core mileston...

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book’s distinctive approach to conflicts of sovereignty in the European Union, and show how it was employed or challenged by the various contributors to the volume. Three types of sovereignty conflicts are distinguished: foundational, institutional, and territorial. Whereas the foundational prin...

Focusing on two key instruments, the Just Transition Fund and the Social Climate Fund, this article assesses to what extent the EU's pledge for a 'just transition' has the potential to foster greater social justice while implementing the European Green Deal. We analyse the related objectives, policy tools and patterns of political conflict and find...

Un manuel qui met l'accent sur les méthodes et méthodologies propres à la science politique, avec des conseils pratiques pour mener à bien un travail de recherche. Une initiation à la recherche en science politique à travers : une présentation pédagogique des méthodes de collecte et d’analyse des données des conseils pratiques pour mener à bien un...

This paper investigates whether the politicization of a new generation of trade agreements has led to the transformation of EU trade policy. It provides a qualitative study of multilevel contention based on sources from civil society and the parliamentary archives in Belgium, Germany, and the European Union concerning the EU-Canada Comprehensive Ec...

Contemporary conflicts of sovereignty in Europe have gone beyond the clash between national and supranational sovereignty. Sovereignty conflicts are increasingly occurring within member states. This paper develops a conceptual framework that distinguishes between foundational, institutional and territorial conflicts of sovereignty, elaborating on t...

In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the German government embraced a major shift towards a grants-based EU recovery fund relying on common European debt. How can we explain this impetus, especially in view of the reticent German fiscal stance in previous years and in the early stages of the pandemic? To elucidate this question, this paper prov...

This contribution traces the dynamics pertaining to political contention over welfare markets in the European Union. It provides an account of the dynamics of political mobilization against marketization policies. The focus lies on pre- and post-2008 dynamics. First, it explains the progressive Europeanization of mobilization until the early 2000s....

The European Union of today cannot be studied as it once was. This original new textbook provides a much-needed update on how the EU's policies and institutions have changed in light of the multiple crises and transformations since 2010. An international team of leading scholars offer systematic accounts on the EU's institutional regime, policies,...

The European Union of today cannot be studied as it once was. This original new textbook provides a much-needed update on how the EU's policies and institutions have changed in light of the multiple crises and transformations since 2010. An international team of leading scholars offer systematic accounts on the EU's institutional regime, policies,...

The European Union of today cannot be studied as it once was. This original new textbook provides a much-needed update on how the EU's policies and institutions have changed in light of the multiple crises and transformations since 2010. An international team of leading scholars offer systematic accounts on the EU's institutional regime, policies,...

The European Union of today cannot be studied as it once was. This original new textbook provides a much-needed update on how the EU's policies and institutions have changed in light of the multiple crises and transformations since 2010. An international team of leading scholars offer systematic accounts on the EU's institutional regime, policies,...

The European Union of today cannot be studied as it once was. This original new textbook provides a much-needed update on how the EU's policies and institutions have changed in light of the multiple crises and transformations since 2010. An international team of leading scholars offer systematic accounts on the EU's institutional regime, policies,...

The European Union of today cannot be studied as it once was. This original new textbook provides a much-needed update on how the EU's policies and institutions have changed in light of the multiple crises and transformations since 2010. An international team of leading scholars offer systematic accounts on the EU's institutional regime, policies,...

The European Union of today cannot be studied as it once was. This original new textbook provides a much-needed update on how the EU's policies and institutions have changed in light of the multiple crises and transformations since 2010. An international team of leading scholars offer systematic accounts on the EU's institutional regime, policies,...

The European Union of today cannot be studied as it once was. This original new textbook provides a much-needed update on how the EU's policies and institutions have changed in light of the multiple crises and transformations since 2010. An international team of leading scholars offer systematic accounts on the EU's institutional regime, policies,...

The European Union of today cannot be studied as it once was. This original new textbook provides a much-needed update on how the EU's policies and institutions have changed in light of the multiple crises and transformations since 2010. An international team of leading scholars offer systematic accounts on the EU's institutional regime, policies,...

The European Union of today cannot be studied as it once was. This original new textbook provides a much-needed update on how the EU's policies and institutions have changed in light of the multiple crises and transformations since 2010. An international team of leading scholars offer systematic accounts on the EU's institutional regime, policies,...

In the post-Maastricht era, member states of the European Union (EU) have proved increasingly reluctant to transfer further competences to the supranational level and are willing to safeguard their sovereignty. Though the responses to the contemporary multiple crises – related to economic and monetary policy, borders and migrations, or democracy an...

This article explores the rise of new conflicts of sovereignty especially with regard to popular sovereignty in the EU polity. It asks whether referenda in the national realm are effective tools to enhance popular sovereignty at supranational level. To elucidate this question, we distinguish between embedded and unilateral referenda. Empirically, t...

This paper deals with the ideas underpinning the EU’s socio-economic governance by focusing on the notion of structural reforms in the framework of the European Semester. It asks which policy ideas are constitutive of the notion of structural reforms in the EU and whether said meaning has changed over time to tackle slow growth and rising inequalit...

Despite the multiple crises Europe currently faces, the salience of EU affairs in Belgium remains low and popular support for the EU above average. However, since the main party in the governing coalition, the Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA), decided to exit the long-standing Belgian pro-EU consensus by labelling itself Eurorealist, Belgium’s voice...

This chapter examines the interactions between the EP and civil society from various angles. It looks at the role of the EP in promoting a stricter regulation of interest groups’ activities, the possibilities offered by the assembly for civil society representatives to take part in agenda setting and deliberations (e.g. through intergroups, public...

This paper asks how governments across Europe have responded to the dilemma between financial responsibility and political responsiveness against the background of heightened fiscal pressure. Focusing on the domestic politics of healthcare reforms in four contrasted cases (England, France, Hungary, and Ireland), we investigate how governments frame...

The notion of ownership is well known in relation to global governance. In the realm of EU macro‐economic coordination, it has become a buzzword since the revamping process of the European Semester in 2015. This article investigates how ownership by four types of domestic actors (governments, administrations, parliaments and social partners) manife...

(Table of Contents) I. Introduction. - II. An intergovernmental parliamentarisation of the Euro area. - III. A new economic Constitution. - IV. Two sets of practical issues. - V. Conclusion: dark matters and alternative paths. | (Abstract) The T-Dem is both important and welcome as it is more important than ever for scholars to engage with politica...

With no formal division between majority and opposition in the parliamentary arena, the European Union (EU) calls for an approach to political opposition which considers the role of civil society. This article explores the case of opposition to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) within and without the European Parliament (EP) through a...

This book explores the European welfare model, arguing that the rollout of European policies for welfare services has led to increased marketization. The author argues that the rise of profit-making in utilities, transport, child and health care is exacerbating rather than reducing inequalities among citizens, demonstrating how the marketization of...

The aim of this paper is to assess to what extent the European Semester, which is the EU framework for the coordination of national economic, fiscal and social policies, accounts for a change in the ideas promoted throughout the crisis. For doing this, we seek to tease out the meaning and substantial policy content entailed by the notion of ‘struct...

Manuel mettant en évidence les méthodes et méthodologies propres à la science politique, avec des conseils pratiques pour mener à bien un travail de recherche. Une initiation à la recherche en science politique à travers : - des conseils pratiques pour mener à bien un travail de recherche - une présentation pédagogique des méthodes de collecte e...

This book explores the European welfare model, arguing that the rollout of European policies for welfare services has led to increased marketization. The author argues that the rise of profit-making in utilities, transport, child and health care is exacerbating rather than reducing inequalities among citizens, demonstrating how the marketization of...

Due to the failure of political integration as early as the 1950s—notably with the rejection of the European Defence Community by France in 1954—the European Community has been mainly geared towards economic integration. This was reflected in the nature of the Treaty of Rome adopted in 1957 with the establishment of the ‘four freedoms’ (circulation...

Resistance to marketization and liberalization is one way to understand the contentious politics of welfare services in the EU. Another way to analyse this issue is to study endeavours to promote the re-regulation of welfare services at the EU level as a counterbalance to negative integration. Where pro-market policies could not be avoided, another...

Since the 1990s, the EU has been a main advocate of a new agenda to bring forward services liberalization, notably in the framework of the GATS signed by member countries of the WTO. Europe’s comparative advantage in the realm of services is at the core of the European narrative about competitiveness. In times of slow growth and high unemployment,...

Welfare services understood in the broad sense, or services of general interest as labelled by the EU, are not often at the centre of political or academic debates. Yet, they constitute a key feature of welfare states across Europe. Besides benefits in terms of social transfers, welfare services are at the core of social policy, encompassing areas...

More than any other domain, the developments which have affected welfare services epitomize the ways in which capitalism in Europe has changed over the past three decades. This involves not only the functioning of the market but also the institutions regulating the economy and the underpinning values thereof. Insofar, we are dealing here with dynam...

As the latest crisis of financial capitalism which broke out in 2008 in the USA put the European banking sector in turmoil, its rescue by public funding caused public debt to skyrocket in the overwhelming majority of European countries. Since then, the policies of austerity implemented across Europe have strongly targeted the welfare state(s). Of c...

The aim of this paper is to assess to what extent the European Semester, which is the EU framework for the coordination of national economic, fiscal and social policies, accounts for a change in the ideas promoted throughout the crisis. For doing this, we seek to tease out the meaning and substantial policy content entailed by the notion of ‘struct...

This book started with the—somewhat gloomy—observations on the effects of the recent financial crisis on welfare services (or SGI) to suggest that, in order to understand how we got there, we need to look at the trends towards the recommodification of welfare services which have been ongoing over the past two decades. This chapter reiterates the id...

The recent financial and debt crisis has resuscitated the debate about European federalism – a theme that seemed not to have survived the painful constitutional adventure that ended with the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009. With the adoption of significant policy and institutional measures for tightening macroeconomic and budgetary coordi...

The bulk of the literature on ‘social Europe’ has suggested that social policy at the level of the EU remains to be characterized by the interplay of courts and markets. While we do not disagree with this argument, our objective is to shed light on the European Commission's entrepreneurship, an element which appears to be somewhat bereft of scholar...

Discourse analysis is one of the most widespread research approaches across the social sciences, ranging from linguistics to sociology, anthropology and political science. Therefore it comes as no surprise that discourse analysis has also become a central approach in European studies. Discursive approaches to Europe have also diversified as the stu...

Whatever happened to Social Europe? Does the concept still exist? And, if so, what does it entail? Though the 1957 Treaty of Rome establishing the European Economic Community was a document to a remarkable extent infused by economic liberalism, the market-building exercises in the early decades of the Community’s existence were to some extent balan...

The politics of public services regulation is one area where the dilemmas of a common European policy in the socio-economic realm have come to the fore. Since the mid-1990s, the promise of a more ‘social’ Europe — or of more positive integration — seems to be farther away than ever. The term ‘services of general interest’ (SGI) coined in EU law and...

The last few years have undeniably been eventful for Europe in ways which are difficult to interpret as one struggles to adjudicate between those positing a stalling of European integration and a second camp claiming formidable acceleration in pace and scope. Although many new structures and policy instruments have emerged, this has seemed to be al...

Avatars of neoliberalism in EU Policy-making This special issue deals with the institutionalization of neoliberal ideas in European policy-making. The introductory article considers that European ideas are not fixed at the European level and then implemented with variations at the national level. On the contrary, the European policy process generat...

This paper investigates why and how French and German leaders converged on an agreement for reforming the European Monetary Union in response to the outbreak of the debt crisis in Europe. To answer these questions, we begin by revising Putnam's two-level game in order to offer a constructivist account of the politics of ‘grand bargains’ in the Euro...

Connecting the relevant literature in sociology, political theory and European studies with original empirical research, this article calls for a reappraisal of conflict when addressing the issue of the democratic legitimacy of the European Union. It offers a critical account of rationalistic and consensus-based deliberative democracy both in the c...

Over the past 15 years, research about Europeanization has developed as a main field for understanding the multiple facets of political change on the European continent. While the notion of Europeanization has generated vivid conceptual debates (Radaelli, 2000a; Olsen, 2002; Ladrech, 2002; Poguntke et al., 2007), its most widespread and basic under...

Research Highlights and Abstract The role of the European Union (EU) in services liberalisation—and the impact thereof on the provision of services of general interest—has been highly contentious both globally and in the EU. Besides other policy issues, services liberalisation contributes to make the EU a ‘conflicted trade power’ ( Meunier and Nico...

This article examines how left-wing associations, unions and political parties could sucessfully mobilise against the proposal for a European directive liberali­sing services in the European Union, commonly known as the Bolkestein directive. The analysis sheds light on two crucial instruments : (1) the alternative expertise developed by the content...

Explaining political parties’ impotence in the EU policy making. The case of Social Democracy and the regulation of public services This article aims deals with the weakness of political parties in the formulation of public policy at European level. It explains why the Party of European Socialists (PES) failed in promoting a regulatory policy that...

This paper investigates the bottom-up preference formation over the draft Directive over services liberalization and its impact on co-decision at the European Union (EU) level from the theoretical perspective of discursive institutionalism. Firstly, it is demonstrated that the anti-liberal discourse framed by the French left led President Chirac to...

Joining with civil society against “Bolkestein” : the European Parliament yielded to a europeanized movement against services liberalization This article explains how, despite a wide consensus on the need to liberalize services as the very cornerstone of the Lisbon Strategy, opponents succeeded in significantly diluting the deregulatory force of th...

This article analyses the parliamentary debates and decision-making related to the highly contentious EU directive on services. It is intended as a contribution to the academic debate on political conflict lines in the European Parliament. Our argument is that neither the left-right cleavage nor a territorial one (old versus new Member States) can...

This paper deals with the conflict over the Bolkestein directive proposal on services liberalization in the European Union. It explains how left-wing political parties, unions and alterglobalist associations succeeded in changing the course of the European decision-making process. The analysis puts forward a comprehensive framework which builds on...

This article aims at contributing to the ongoing academic debate about European integration. It stresses the need for an interdisciplinary approach rooted in history and political science. The argument is twofold. Most of the existing literature overlooks the historical dimension of contention over the making of Europe and implicitly makes it a con...

Als die Mitglieder der Europäischen Kommission am 14. Januar 2004 den EURichtlinienentwurf über Dienstleistungen annahmen, rechnete niemand in Brüssel oder den europäischen Hauptstädten mit dem politischen Sturm, der die Technokraten in Brüssel im darauf folgenden Jahr erwartet – und noch weniger mit der anhaltenden, existentiellen Krise, in die di...

More than 2 years after the failed French referendum on the European constitutional treaty (ECT), this paper puts contention over Europe within the French left in perspective both in the context of the coming of age of anti-globalization (or global justice) ideas as well as the 2007 Presidential election. On a theoretical level, the analysis relies...

Cet article explique comment de fortes résistances à l'Europe ont pu se cristalliser au sein du Parti socialiste français dans la campagne référendaire de 2005 sur le Traité constitutionnel européen. Dans une perspective historique et institution-nelle, il montre d'abord que les résistances à l'intégration européenne ont, depuis les débuts du proje...

Abstract will be provided by author.