For this volume, first-rate European scholars look at the consequences of these and other challenges faced by European societies.
Contributions revisit traditional objects of political science – state sovereignty, civil society and citizenship – mixing sophisticated empirical analyses with methodological and conceptual innovations including field theory, multiple correspondence analysis, and the study of space sets.
Combining qualitative and quantitative research techniques, and macro- and micro-levels, chapters have in common a contextual analysis of politics through scrutiny of configurations of groups, representations and perceptions.
A transnational perspective is the common thread linking every study in this volume, which seeks to avoid methodological nationalism.
Niilo Kauppi is Research Professor at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS, France) and Associate Director of the Center for European Political Sociology at the University of Strasbourg. He teaches political sociology and social theory at Sciences Po Strasbourg, the University of Lausanne and the University of Luxembourg. In addition to being a member of the Executive Committee of the ECPR, Kauppi is co-convenor of the ECPR Standing Group in Political Sociology. Kauppi's research interests range from European integration and reforms of the European university to intellectual radicalism and social theory. His publications include Democracy, Social Resources and Political Power in the European Union (Manchester University Press, 2005) and Radicalism in French Culture: A Sociology of French Theory in the 1960s (Ashgate, 2010) and numerous articles in journals such as Comparative European Politics, Scandinavian Political Studies, Politique européenne, International Political Sociology and Theory and Society.