"European Objects: harmonisation through science and the market"

Please note: only the introduction is in French, the rest (from 1:30) is in English. 

12 December 2023 session of the CEE General Seminar series. 
Speaker: Brice Laurent, Research Fellow, Center for the Sociology of Innovation, Mines ParisTech.
Chair: Charlotte Halpern, FNSP Research Fellow, Sciences Po, CEE.
Discussant: Takuya Onoda, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, Sciences Po, CEE.

Many European regulatory initiatives are based on actions on and by technical objects. An empirical approach based on European objects enables us to grasp the manifestations of European harmonisation, but also to identify the tensions between references to science and the market, which are seen as outside politics, on the one hand, and technical-regulatory practices that combine scientific examination and negotiations between the players concerned, on the other. Based on a recent book (European Objects: The troubled dreams of harmonisation), the presentation discussed the value of studying European objects for problematising harmonisation, but also for developing critical resources for thinking about European democratic weaknesses.

Brice Laurent is a researcher at the Center for the Sociology of Innovation, Mines ParisTech, and director of the Social Sciences, Economy and Society Department of the French National Agency for Environmental, Food and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES). His research interests focus on the relationship between science and democracy, in sites where innovation is promoted, regulated or contested. His books include Les politiques des nanotechnologies (ECLM, 2010), Democratic Experiments (MIT Press, 2017) and European Objects (MIT Press, 2022). His current works include investigations of experimental forms of innovation as well as research projects about the politics of subsurface resources. At ANSES, the department that Brice Laurent leads coordinates the agency’s expertise in the social sciences and is in charge of dialogue with stakeholders.

His latest book is available open acces from MIT Press: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262543330/european-objects/

European Objects: harmonisation through science and the market - Brice Laurent

"L'État et la toile. Des politiques de l'internet à la numérisation de l'action publique"

Séance du 13 février 2024 du Séminaire général du CEE.
Intervenante : Anne Bellon, maîtresse de conférences en sociologie à l’Université ­technologique de Compiègne (UTC) ;
Présidence : Philippe Bezes, directeur de recherche CNRS au CEE ;
Discussion : Dominique Boullier, professeur émérite des universités en sociologie, CEE.

Avec le développement de l’internet, l’­action de l’État est prise dans une toile d’échanges numériques toujours plus dense. Cette toile apparaît comme un monde libertaire, décentré, changeant et sans frontière, en contradiction par conséquent avec les logiques même de l’action publique, dont l’objectif est de disposer d'outils de contrôle, d’organisation et de coercition. L’État peut-il rendre ­gouvernable cet univers ? Comment a-t-il pris pied dans la toile ? Et quelles caractéristiques communes rassemblent cet ensemble disparate d’interventions liées au numérique ?

L’ouvrage propose ainsi de démêler les liens entre l’État et la toile. Le récit qui en découle constitue la première histoire du traitement public de l’internet en France. Original par son ancrage national et son ampleur historique, il adopte un point de vue inédit non pas sur l’État mais depuis l’État. Il dévoile ainsi les rouages d’une révolution numérique dans l’État, conçue comme l’importation des logiques du monde de l’internet dans le secteur public, ainsi que leur traduction constante, voire leur subversion, dans les administrations.

Anne Bellon est docteure en science politique et maîtresse de conférences en sociologie à l’Université technologique de Compiègne (UTC). Enseignante et ­chercheuse, elle travaille et publie sur la régulation des grandes plateformes, les politiques de l’internet, la démocratie en ligne, les mobilisations numériques et la transformation de l’État. Elle œuvre également au ­développement de nouvelles méthodes numériques pour les sciences sociales.

L'Etat et la toile - Anne Bellon

"Understanding accountability in democratic governance"

5 March 2024 session of the CEE General Seminar series.
Speaker: Yannis Papadopoulos, Professor of Public policy at the Institute of Political Studies of the University of Lausanne
Chair: Charlotte Halpern, FNSP Research Fellow, Sciences Po, CEE
Discussant: Charlotte Boucher, PhD Candidate, Sciences Po, CEE

Accountability of policy-makers is a key issue in democratic governance. The electoral punishment of the incumbents, parliamentary control of the government, and sanctions in the case of administrative misconduct or negligence are the most visible manifestations of accountability in politics. However, the phenomenon is much more complex, and fully understanding such a multifaceted object requires bridging bodies of work that usually remain disjointed. This book assesses the effectiveness of vertical accountability through elections and how interinstitutional accountability operates in checks-and-balances systems, along with the growing role of the courts. It evaluates how the accountability of the bureaucracy has been affected by managerial reforms and different governance transformations. It also scrutinizes to what extent mediatization and policy failure boost accountability, before zooming in on the feelings and reactions of those who are held accountable.

Yannis Papadopoulos is a professor of public policy at the Institute of Political Studies of the University of Lausanne and a member of the Laboratoire d'analyse de la gouvernance et de l'action publique en Europe (LAGAPE). His research concentrates on the implications of governance transformations for accountability and democracy. He recently published Understanding Accountability in Democratic Governance (Cambridge Elements in Public Policy, 2023). Further work on the topic includes Democracy in Crisis? Politics, Governance and Policy (Palgrave, 2013) and Accountability and European Governance (co-edited with Deirdre Curtin and Peter Mair; Routledge, 2012), as well as many articles in international journals and book chapters. He has been a research director with the French CNRS and a research fellow at St John's College in Oxford. He has served as a visiting professor at the European University Institute (also Jean Monnet fellow), Sciences Po Paris, Ecole normale supérieure, and in various Swiss, French and Greek universities.

Understanding accountability in democratic governance - Yannis Papadopoulos

"Countermobilization: Policy Feedback and Backlash in a Polarized Age" 

12 March 2024 session of the CEE General Seminar series.

Speaker: Eric M. Patashnik, Julis-Rabinowitz Professor of Public Policy and Political Science and Chair of the Political Science Department at Brown University. 
Chair: Takuya Onoda, MCSA Postdoctoral Fellow, Sciences Po, CEE
Discussant: Emiliano Grossman, Full Professor, Sciences Po, CEE

Eric M. Patashnik presented an overview of his new book, Countermobilization: Policy Feedback and Backlash in a Polarized Age (University of Chicago Press, 2023). The most successful policies not only solve problems. They also build supportive political coalitions. Yet, sometimes, policies trigger backlash and mobilize opposition forces. Although backlash is not a new phenomenon, today’s political landscape is distinguished by the frequency and pervasiveness of backlash in nearly every area of US policy-making, from abortion rights to the Affordable Care Act. The book presents a policy-centered theory of backlash that illuminates how policies stimulate backlashes by imposing losses, overreaching, or challenging existing arrangements to which people are strongly attached. Drawing on a database of more than 2000 New York Times articles about backlash episodes in the US since the 1960s as well as detailed case studies of issues from immigration and trade to healthcare and gun control, Patashnik shows that backlash politics is fueled by partisan polarization, cultural shifts, and negative policy feedback from activist government itself. His analysis also offers crucial insights to help identify and navigate backlash risks.

Eric M. Patashnik is Julis-Rabinowitz Professor of Public Policy and Political Science and Chair of the Political Science Department at Brown University. Patashnik is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Before coming to Brown, Patashnik held faculty positions at the University of Virginia, UCLA, and Yale University. Patashnik is the author and editor of several books including Reforms at Risk: What Happens After Major Policy Changes Are Enacted (Princeton University Press, 2008), Unhealthy Politics: The Battle over Evidence-Based Medicine (with Alan Gerber and Conor Dowling, Princeton University Press, 2017), and Putting Trust in the US Budget: Federal Trust Funds and the Politics of Commitment (Cambridge University Press, 2000). He has twice won the Louis Brownlow Book Award of the National Academy of Public Administration and also won the Don K. Price Book Award of the American Political Science Association. He was a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution during 1995-96, served as President of the Public Policy Section of the American Political Science Association during 2017-18, and was the editor of Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law during 2016-2019. Patashnik received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1996.

Countermobilization: Policy Feedback and Backlash in a Polarized Age - Eric Patashnik

"Monetary Policy as if Democracy Mattered" 

19 March 2024 session of the CEE General Seminar series.

Speaker: Leah Downey, Junior Research Fellow at St. John’s College, University of Cambridge, affiliated with the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS)  
Chair: Colin Hay, Professor, Sciences Po, CEE
Discussant: Lea Dornacher, PhD Candidate, Sciences Po, CEE

Based on her forthcoming book, Our Money: Monetary Policy as if Democracy Mattered, Leah Downey gave a talk arguing against central bank independence as currently constituted. Focusing on the U.S. case, Downey offers a principled case against central bank independence by both challenging the economic theory behind the institution and developing a democratic case for sustaining the power of the legislature to determine who can create money and on what terms.

Leah Downey is a political theorist with interests in the politics of economic theory, economic policymaking, and the administrative state. She has B.A.s in Mathematics and Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an MSc in Economics & Philosophy from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a PhD in Government from Harvard University.

Monetary Policy as if Democracy Mattered - Leah Downey

"Political Change in Hard Economic Times" 

2 April 2024 session of the CEE General Seminar series.

Speaker: Yotam Margalit, Brian Mulroney Chair in Government at the School of Political Science and International Affairs at Tel Aviv University and Professor in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. 
Chair: Brenda Van Coppenolle, Senior Research Fellow, Sciences Po, CEE 
Discussant: Jens Carstens, PhD Candidate, Sciences Po, CEE

How do people respond politically to the experience of personal economic hardship? How do electorates shift in response to the eruption of economic crises: do they turn against the incumbent, reward a certain political camp, polarize to the extremes, or perhaps continue to vote much like before? In this talk I will discuss my findings from several studies, examining these questions in different settings and economic experiences. The findings highlight (1) the bifurcation of preferences among those personally hurt by crises and others; (2) the central role ideological predispositions play in shaping citizens’ responses to economic hardship; and (3) a systematic asymmetry in the way electorates punish incumbents from the left vs. the right when economic crises erupt under their watch.

Article: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4512364 

Yotam Margalit is the Brian Mulroney Chair in Government at the School of Political Science and International Affairs at Tel Aviv University and a Professor in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. He specializes in comparative and international political economy.

Political Change in Hard Economic Times - Yotam Margalit

Interventions de : 
Pierre Pistre, maître de conférences en géographie à l'Université Paris Cité, membre du laboratoire Géographie-cités
Simon Audebert, doctorant en science politique à Sciences Po, Centre d'études européennes et de politique comparée, et responsable "Opinions et territoires" à la Fondation de l'écologie politique
Discussion par 
Julien Megdoud, Conseiller du Directeur général délégué Territoires et Ruralités, Agence nationale de la cohésion des territoires (ANCT)

L'écologie depuis les ruralités - L'importance de parler des ruralités

Interventions de : 
Nadège Vezinat, professeure de sociologie à l'Université Paris 8, membre du Cresppa
Antonin Besch, doctorant en sociologie et science politique à l'Université de Strasbourg, laboratoire Sage
Discussion par : 
Arnaud Bontemps, co-porte parole du collectif Nos services publics

L'écologie depuis les ruralités - L'accès aux services publics

Les ruralités et l’écologie, perspectives historiques - carte blanche à Bertrand Hervieu

Historically white, and male, colleges and universities in the U.S. began to diversify their undergraduate bodies in the 1960s and have made considerable progress since then.  But progress on faculty diversity has stalled.  That has wide-ranging implications for everything from university completion rates for students of color to the presence of new voices in medical research.  Universities deserve much of the blame, for they implemented programs to diversify the faculty that their own social scientists had long known to be ineffective in the business world.  An analysis of the efficacy of diversity programs at 600 schools over 20 years sheds light on how universities can build faculties that look more like their students, and the wider society, in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity.

Frank Dobbin is Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard & visiting fellow at Sciences Po, CEE. 
He holds a B.A. from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.  His Inventing Equal Opportunity (Princeton U. Press 2009) shows how HR managers and activists defined what it meant to discriminate in the eyes of the law, broadening the definition over time. His Getting to Diversity: What Works and What Doesn't with Alexandra Kalev (Harvard U. Press [Belknap] 2022) looks at the effectiveness of dozens of different diversity programs, in over 800 companies across more than 30 years, to answer the questions: Which programs help, which hurt, and how can harmful programs be improved?  Dobbin and Kalev are now investigating university programs designed to promote faculty diversity, using similar methods to sort out which are most effective.  Dobbin has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Radcliffe Institute, the Safra Center for Ethics, and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study.

Seminar at Sciences Po on June 19, 2025. 
Chaired by Bruno Cousin (Sciences Po, CEE) and discussed by Christine Musselin (Sciences Po, CSO) and Angela Greulich (Sciences Po, CRIS)

Which Faculty Diversity Programs Work? Evidence from 600 US Colleges & Universities, by Frank Dobbin

Sergio Fabbrini (LUISS) talked about his latest book, A Federalist Alternative for European Governance
The European Union in Hard Times (Cambridge University Press, 2024)

18 November 2025 session of the CEE General Seminar, chaired by Florence Haegel and discussed by Carlo Colombo.

The European Union (EU) is facing dramatic challenges, a military war on the East, a trade war on the West and an illiberal war from within. The arrival of Donald Trump at the US Presidency has introduced a radical change of the world political and ideological paradigm. The new paradigm has called into question, not only European security but also its liberal democracy model. In dealing with those challenges, the EU is showing a decision-making weakness due to the intergovernmental governance become predominant with the crises of the 2010s and 2020s.

During those crises the European Council was the driving institution for managing them. National governments were able to take decisions, but their decisions were contradictory and unaccountable and regularly hindered by divisions and vetoes. The process of inter-governmentalization of the EU has emerged also in fields that should be the province of the supranational European Commission, as trade policy. The EU is functioning as an intergovernmental organization, leaving supranational governance to manage the low political salience’s issues of the single market. To accommodate national governments’ divergent preferences, the EU is acquiring the features of an international organization, far from its supranational foundations. From an ever-closer union to an ever-looser union.

A union of 27 (and tomorrow 35) national governments, deciding under the condition of unanimity, cannot deal with the existential threats represented by Putin’s imperialism, Trump’s nationalism and internal right-wing’s illiberalism. The EU is under attack and doesn’t have the institutional tools to deal with those threats. To escape from paralysis and decline, the EU should go beyond the EU. Acknowledging its internal divisions regarding the finalité of the integration project, and operating outside of the Treaties, it is necessary to move in direction of a multi-tier Europe. Based on distinct constitutional arrangements, a confederacy, a community, and a federation might be envisaged, with the latter endowed with the fiscal and military capacity to act as a legitimate and effective political actor. A core organized according to the model of a federal union and not a federal state. Without the driving force of a federalist core, it will be implausible to face the military war on the East, the trade war on the West and the illiberalism’s challenge from within.

Sergio Fabbrini is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Relations and Intesa Sanpaolo Chair on European Governance at the Political Science Department of the Luiss Guido Carli in Rome. He had the Pierre Keller Chair at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (2019-2020) and he was a Recurrent Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley. He was Jemolo Fellow at the Nuffield College, Oxford University and Jean Monnet Chair Professor at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, European University Institute in Florence. He lectured in several international universities and won several prizes. He published twenty-two books, two co-authored books and twenty edited or co-edited books or journals’ special issues, and several hundred scientific articles and essays in seven languages in the most important peer-reviewed international journals. He is considered one of the most authoritative scholars on European and comparative politics and institutions.

"The European union in hard times: how to overcome its weakness?" - by Sergio Fabrini

The Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics (Sciences Po & CNRS) is a multidisciplinary laboratory dedicated to comparative political analysis.
https://www.sciencespo.fr/centre-etudes-europeennes/en.html

European Objects: harmonisation through science and the market - Brice Laurent

Sciences Po CEE