EUROPEAN STUDIES

EU research in the past decade has been preoccupied with the Union’s polycrisis. Theoretically, this has boosted enquiries into contestation and politicization, as has been theorized prominently in postfunctionalism, the return of intergovernmentalism, adapted in notions such as discursive intergovernmentalism, and advances in understanding and explaining differentiated integration and disintegration. The empirical crises experience and the theoretical innovations to understand its origins, dynamics and consequences of these events took shape in the adapted institutional context of the post-Lisbon EU. Accordingly, the changes introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon have attracted considerable attention. Due to the high politics involved, the risen role of the Council, the changed role of the European Parliament and the increased involvement of national parliaments and the responsiveness of EU and national actors to increasingly EU-sceptic publics have been studied. Much less attention has been paid to incremental dynamics that the Treaty of Lisbon triggered in sub-state venues of EU policy-making.
To fill this research gap, this project a) conducts innovative research on how sub-national bodies are involved in EU policy-making, b) brings together scholars working on the following grand themes of recent EU research: 1) the contribution and changed role of sub-state polycrisis and subsequent Covid-19 crisis; 2) the response and perception of sub-state actors in face of rising contestation and politicization of EU policy-making and integration; 3) inter-institutional power-shifts since the Treaty of Lisbon and the polycrisis; 4) sub-national actors as motor and subject to differentiated (dis)integration.

This research project is funded by the budget of the state of Saxony-Anhalt and runs from 01.11.2021 to 31.03.2023 and is led by Prof. Dr. Heidbreder (OvGU) and Dr. Schade (Cornell University). 

Click here to go to our project in the Saxony-Anhalt Research Portal.