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Elements for a Structural Constructivist Theory of Politics and of European Center for European Studies Working Paper Series #104 Elements for a Structural Constructivist Theory of Politics and of European Integration1 by Niilo Kauppi Senior Research Fellow, Academy of Finland Visiting Scholar, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University Abstract Pierre Bourdieu’s structural constructivist theory of politics offers powerful instruments for a critical analy- sis of political power. In this paper, I explore structural constructivism as a theory of politics and of Euro- pean integration. By structural constructivism I refer to a mostly French research tradition that develops some of Bourdieu’s theoretical tools. In European studies, social constructivism has provided an alternative to traditional approaches such as intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism. Structural constructivism remedies some of the weaknesses of most versions of social constructivism, such as their diffuse concep- tion of power and ideational notion of culture. This paper develops a structural constructivist approach that examines the European Union as a multileveled and polycentric emerging political field. Keywords: Pierre Bourdieu-European Integration-Political Power-Resources-Structural Constructivism 1. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Council for European Studies Conference in Chicago, 16 March 2002, at the “Pierre Bourdieu, Social Scientist and Public Intellectual” Conference at Boston University, 19 October 2002, and at the visiting scholars’ seminar, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University, 13 November 2002. Many thanks to the participants, especially Jim Ennis, Rick Fantasia, Peter Hall, Hélène Lipstadt, David Swartz, Thomas Zittel, and Vera Zolberg, for their comments. An abridged version of this paper will be published in Theory and Society (special issue on Pierre Bourdieu). Please send any comments to nkauppi@mappi. helsinki.fi 1 Elements for a Structural Constructivist Theory of Politics and of European Integration1 Niilo Kauppi Senior Research Fellow, Academy of Finland Visiting Scholar, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University Abstract Pierre Bourdieu’s structural constructivist theory of politics offers powerful instruments for a critical analysis of political power. In this paper, I explore structural constructivism as a theory of politics and of European integration. By structural constructivism I refer to a mostly French research tradition that develops some of Bourdieu’s theoretical tools. In European studies, social constructivism has provided an alternative to traditional approaches such as intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism. Structural constructivism remedies some of the weaknesses of most versions of social constructivism, such as their diffuse conception of power and ideational notion of culture. This paper develops a structural constructivist approach that examines the European Union as a multileveled and polycentric emerging political field. Keywords: Pierre Bourdieu-European Integration-Political Power-Resources-Structural Constructivism Until now, the growing secondary literature on Pierre Bourdieu’s work has neglected his theory of politics. Moreover, Bourdieu never himself studied the European Union, which he considered politically and morally condemnable in its current, neoliberal form.2 However, several scholars have adapted some of Bourdieu’s analytical tools to the study of political phenomena and, more recently, of the European Union.3 In the first and 1. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Council for European Studies Conference in Chicago, 16 March 2002, at the “Pierre Bourdieu, Social Scientist and Public Intellectual” -Conference at Boston University, 19 October 2002, and at the visiting scholars’ seminar, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University, 13 November 2002. Many thanks to the participants, especially Jim Ennis, Rick Fantasia, Peter Hall, Hélène Lipstadt, David Swartz, Thomas Zittel, and Vera Zolberg, for their comments. An abridged version of this paper will be published in Theory and Society (special issue on Pierre Bourdieu). Please send any comments to [email protected]. 2. Cf. for instance Bourdieu, Pierre. Acts of Resistance: Against the New Myths of Our Time (Cambridge: Polity, 1998). 3. Cf. for instance Gaxie, Daniel. Les professionnels du politique (Paris: PUF, 1973); Le cens caché. Inégalités culturelles et ségrégation politique (Paris: Seuil, 1978); La démocratie représentative (Paris: Montchrestien, 2000); Gaxie, Daniel and Offerlé, Michel. “Les militants associatifs et syndicaux au pouvoir? Capital social et carrière politique,” In Pierre Birnbaum (ed) Les élites socialistes au pouvoir (Paris: PUF, 1985); Muel-Dreyfus, Francine. Vichy et l’éternel feminin (Paris: Seuil, 1996). Studies on the EU using and developing some of Bourdieu’s intellectual tools include Beauvallet, Willy. “Institutionnalisation et professionnalisation de l’Europe politique. Le cas des eurodéputés français,“ Politique européenne hiver/2003; Georgakakis, Didier (ed). Les métiers de l’Europe. Politiques, acteurs et professionnalisation de l’Union Européenne (Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2002); Kauppi, Niilo. “La construction de l’Europe : le cas des élections européennes en Finlande 1999,” Cultures & Conflits 38-39 (2000): 101-118; “Power or Subjection? French Women Politicians in the 2 second sections of this paper, I provide a critical interpretation of Bourdieu’s structural constructivist political theory, discussing his analysis of domination and the political field and contrasting these with other theories, especially Max Weber’s. In the third part, I outline a structural constructivist4 approach to European integration. Bourdieu’s structural constructivist theory of politics offers a powerful vision of society and new instruments for the study of domination and electoral politics. Drawing mostly on Max Weber and Karl Marx, but also on Émile Durkheim and Robert Michels, Bourdieu elaborated a complex but pessimistic and disenchanted view of politics. Indeed, towards the end of his life, he became a prominent political figure in the anti-globalization struggle. Bourdieu’s theory of politics can be divided into three components: a general analysis of the social aspects of the political (le politique) and domination, a more specific analysis of politics (la politique), and the political practice that he developed at the end of his career. The first component elaborates chiefly on Weber’s sociology of domination and its analysis of the political. In Bourdieu’s Marx inspired framework, the struggle for domination takes place between the dominant and the dominated. The second component restricts political action to a specific location, the political field. Here, in contrast to the first component, and following Weber’s phenomenological idea of life spheres, Bourdieu sees politics as forming an area of activity that can be separated from other areas of activity such as the economy, religion, education, and culture. For Bourdieu, the division of society into social classes forms the explanatory basis for the analysis of political activity, and the world of representation is one site of the political struggle between the dominant and the dominated. I. Domination To conferre all their power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men, that may reduce all their Wills, by plurality of voices, unto one Will ... this done, the Multitude so united in one Person, is called a COMMON-WEALTH, in latine CIVITAS.5 In Bourdieu’s mind, the right that its citizens have to formulate political opinions and emit political judgments is the fundamental characteristic of any democratic regime. In theory, democracy is composed of citizens who, with certain age limits, are all equal. However, as Bourdieu demonstrates in his numerous studies on political opinion6, socially the ability to produce a political opinion and to emit a political judgement is unequally distributed. The technical competence that has to do with political judgement is actually a social competence. This ability varies with educational qualifications and age, among other factors. Those endowed with cultural and economic resources European Parliament,” The European Journal of Women’s Studies 6(3) (1999): 331-342; “European Union Institutions and French Political Careers,” Scandinavian Political Studies 19(1) (1996): 1-24;s24 Mangenot, Michel, “Une école européenne d’administration? L’improbable conversion de l’ENA à l’Europe,” Politix 43 (1998): 7-32. 4. Bourdieu, Pierre. “Social Space and Symbolic Power,” Sociological Theory 4 (1989): 14-25; Ansart, Pierre. Les sociologies contemporaines (Paris: Seuil, 1990); Kauppi, Niilo. French Intellectual Nobility: Institutional and Symbolic Transformations in the Post-Sartrian Era (Albany: SUNY-Press, 1996), 53-68. 5. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Edited by Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 120. 6. Cf. For instance Pierre Bourdieu. Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 397-465. 3 will also be to make political judgements. As in other areas of activity, in politics a concentration of the objectified or embodied instruments of production of political opinions can be observed. In this sense, Western democracies are already selective democracies, as only part of the population has the symbolic means to produce a political
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