6533b85ffe1ef96bd12c0f78

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Exploring the Political Ontology of European Integration

subject

description

In this chapter, the author politicizes the ontological dimension of EU studies. He discusses ontology’s power to determine the real by analyzing some of its unformulated presuppositions and the links with knowledge and action. He argues that key European institutions like the European Commission do not change only because of institutional dynamics but also in relation to transnational interplays of differentiated agents operating simultaneously in multiple social spheres. Institutions and particularly institutional change have to be explained in the light of both new policy challenges and the preferences and habits of the agents making up these institutions and their surroundings. Such an analysis challenges a number of firmly held ontological assumptions of research on the EU on issues such as agency-structure and material-ideational.