Theoretical Framework

Research Areas

The EGPP’s research and activities are organised around six dynamic research areas, each led by a dedicated area coordinator:

These research areas are underpinned by a number of key theoretical approaches and broad themes for contemporary Europe, strictly connected with each other. The research areas are not mutually exclusive, but rather overlap and complement one another, reflecting the interconnected nature of European governance and politics. Scholars and projects often engage with multiple research areas simultaneously, fostering cross-cutting perspectives and collaborative work across thematic boundaries.

Governance and politics perspectives

As the name of the programme reveals, the EGPP addresses governance as well as politics aspects in Europe:

Governance describes the way in which public policy is conducted between nation-states and the EU. It refers to formal and informal institutions, treaties and laws, fundamental rights, and policy processes. Historically, the concept is useful in describing the process of centre-formation and constitutionalisation at EU level. It is also useful to understand European identity building around cultural and constitutional values.

Politics refers to the conflicts and tensions that such processes of centralisation create and to the cleavages they produce, within and across countries. Politics also refers to the actors, such as new parties, that mobilise on these transformations, either in support thereof or in resistance to them.

Multi-level governance and politics

Analysis at EGPP covers and brings together the national and the EU levels and investigates how they influence one another, collaborate, and conflict. It considers both nation-states and the EU institutions as core actors and sources of explanation to understand the dynamics of politics in Europe. Consequently, the programme adopts a multi-level perspective. The relationship between nation-states and the EU varies, both over time and across countries. This perspective particularly informs the work on EU enlargement and transatlantic relations, examining how candidate countries and external partners navigate the complexities of European integration.

Differentiated integration

The multi-level perspective is linked closely to variation in the depth of integration across countries. Differentiated integration refers to policy sectors in which variable groups of countries integrate more or less deeply, which is typical of a compound polity. Such variations express in governance structures put in place where integration is deeper, but also in the politics of integration, in which support or lack of support for integration expresses through various channels of voice: elections, referendums, and protest.

Regime transitions, European integration, and geopolitical competition

Southeastern Europe represents a critical case for understanding the dynamics of regime transition, European integration, and geopolitical competition. Since the mid-1980s, the countries in the region have undergone significant political, economic, and cultural transformations — though these transitions have not been simultaneous, linear, or consistent. The region illuminates key questions about competing nationalisms, weak or captured states, post-conflict reconciliation, institution-building, and authoritarian backsliding. Despite official commitment to EU integration, the accession process for the Western Balkans has stalled for almost a decade, raising questions about the effectiveness of ‘Europeanisation’ as a driver of democratic consolidation. Throughout history, Southeastern Europe has been at the intersection of the ‘West’ and the ‘East’, and today it remains a terrain of competing geopolitical influences — making it a crucial area of study for understanding broader dynamics of European security and global power shifts. The Southeastern Europe: transitions, prospects, crossroads research area addresses these themes, bringing together scholars working on democracy, regime transitions, conflict, and geopolitics in the region.

Centre formation, identity-building, and cleavages in Europe

Centre-formation and identity building at EU level can be interpreted as a critical juncture producing cleavages both between territorial areas and functional socio-economic groups or groups aligned on cultural dimensions that do not align territorially but that, on the contrary, cut across national borders. EGPP analyses both types of fault lines in Europe as they help develop theories about divergence in Europe and eventually disintegration, but also convergence and similarity of the challenges European societies face, and ultimately Europeanisation. The Cleavages and comparative politics research area provides a systematic comparative framework to analyse these divisions across European societies.

In a context of a compound but also fractured and fractious Europe, the politicisation of the European integration process concerns winners and losers of the process of deeper and wider integration, both in terms of specific groups of countries and European-wide socio-economic classes; core-periphery cleavages between centralizing forces and national or even regional resistances; groups of countries aligned along similar interests, be it financial interests (creditor vs debtor countries, issues of cross-country redistribution and solidarity), immigration (distribution of burden and costs for domestic welfare system), or support for specific policy areas (CAP) — such territoriality can take North-South, East-West, “frugal” vs rest, among other forms; European-wide transnational groups with shared interests (such as generations) and value- and attitude-based groups cutting across national borders; diverging interests between groups of member-states with different degrees of integration (Eurozone vs non-Euro countries, Schengen member-states, etc.); masses vs elites, nationalist populism mobilization against technocratic EU and elite constituencies at national level, and populist and technocratic critique to representative democracy; and European identity and national identities in the restructuring of citizenship with the supra-national integration of political, civic and social rights, with consequences on redistribution of resources across territories and across dimensions of inequality.

Politicisation and analysis of actors and dempocratic processes

The politicisation of territorial and functional cleavages is addressed through the analysis of political actors — political parties and EU federations and EP’s parliamentary groups, social movements and protest forms of voice expression, interest associations, mainstream media and social media platforms — considered at both the mass level (electorates) and elite level (organisations); their agenda-setting power, in conjunction with processes such as elections and the use of referendums and other non-representative, in a traditional meaning, democratic instruments, namely democratic innovation in the form of citizens’ assemblies, deliberative institutions and so on; and the crisis, instability and volatility of configurations of actors. Party systems and the alignments that structure them are profoundly changed. The recent turbulences have a profound impact on democratic politics in the member states. In many of them, a pronounced legacy of the crisis is the volatility of domestic politics and the severe punishment of governing parties. Mainstream parties are being squeezed and the vote share of challenger parties have increased. In a number of Eastern and Central Europe countries there has been a pronounced shift to the right; the ‘European project’ has become much more politicized and contested.

A central focus of EGPP’s work in this area is on elections and voting behaviour, both at the national and European level. European Parliament elections have become increasingly salient as arenas where citizens express their preferences not only on EU-level issues but also on domestic political conflicts. EGPP analyses political behaviour broadly conceived — from turnout and vote choice to party identification and issue voting — as well as the emotional and affective dimensions of political engagement. Affective polarization — the tendency for citizens to view political opponents with hostility and distrust — has emerged as a defining feature of contemporary European democracies, with consequences for social cohesion, political discourse, and the functioning of democratic institutions. Closely linked to this is the phenomenon of democratic backsliding, whereby established democracies experience a gradual erosion of democratic norms, checks and balances, and the rule of law. Understanding the conditions under which democracies come under strain, and the role of elections and political behaviour in either accelerating or counteracting these trends, is a key priority of EGPP’s research agenda.

The Elections, political behavior and democracy research area focuses on these dynamics, with particular attention to affective polarization and democratic backsliding across European democracies.

The effect of crises

The multiple crises confronting the EU in recent years – economic and financial during the Great Recession, the refugee crisis, the COVID-19 emergency, climate change and the war in Ukraine – have both further exacerbated divisions and provided opportunities for collective action in Europe. From a political economy perspective, these crises exposed imbalances between countries, especially within the Eurozone, but also fundamental social inequalities with weaker economic sectors being overwhelmingly affected. From a governance perspective, these multiple crises exposed the limits of the EU’s public finance capacity and its struggle to address distributive and re-distributive economic themes, but also stressed the capacity to create new common instruments for financial and security cross-country solidarity.

Technocratic governance, populism and the challenge to democracy

One central cleavage that emerges from the push toward EU centre-formation is the centre-periphery cleavage between the EU core and the varying degrees of resistance coming from nation-states. This, alongside the contrapositions between groups of countries, is the main territorial feature of European politics. It is a politics element that is directly linked to governance structures, namely through integration (e.g., creation of common debt instruments), disintegration (e.g., Brexit), non-membership or differentiated integration (e.g., Eurozone, Schengen, among others). From a governance perspective, it is an element that juxtaposes technocratic elites and nationalist mobilization of voters by populist anti-establishment parties. Both pose a threat to core features of representative democracy and its institutions in Europe.

Europe in the global cleavage constellation

Finally, the EGPP considers global cleavages and the way in which Europe as a whole stands in the international alignments: diplomatically and strategically; economically in the context of globalization or de-nationalisation; culturally as supportive of a democratic, rule of law-based, redistributive type of governance. The programme analyses the relationship of such European features with economically more liberal and/or politically more authoritarian world competitors. The Europe in the World research area examines the EU’s role in international relations, security, and world politics, while the EU-Asia relations research area focuses on the evolving relationship between Europe and the Asia-Pacific region in an increasingly multipolar world. The EU enlargement and transatlantic relations aims at understanding the evolving relationship between Europe and the United States, in an era of growing transatlantic divergence — marked by shifting US priorities, trade tensions, and differing approaches to security and multilateralism. These dynamics raise fundamental questions about European strategic autonomy, burden-sharing within NATO, and the future of the liberal international order that has long underpinned Euro-Atlantic cooperation.

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