| Marco Steenbergen and Gary
Marks, and two graduate students, David Scott and Carole Wilson, are organizing
a workshop that will take place in April 30 to May 2, 2000, on "Dimensions
of Contestation in the European Union" funded by the North Carolina EU
Center. The goal of the ongoing project is to bring together a group
of European and American experts on citizens, elections, and political
parties to write a book on whether and how political cleavages are arising
in the European Union.
This project takes off from
the supposition that the EU is a multi-level polity in which European issues
have become salient not just for the governments of EU member states, but
also for political parties, citizens, interest groups, and social movements.
These actors are engaged in intense debates about the future of European
integration. The issues are as complex as they are contested.
The question we ask in this
project is whether the debate over European integration, despite its complexity,
can be reduced to a relatively small number of dimensions. In addition,
we want to explore the extent to which these dimensions differ across actors
and whether they have shifted over time.
Draft chapters by the following
participants (in addition to the organizers) will be discussed at the workshop:
Chris Anderson, Cees Van Der Eijk, Mark Franklin, Matthew Gabel,
Simon Hix, Liesbet Hooghe, Doug Imig, Leonard Ray, Sidney Tarrow, and Jacques
Thomassen. These chapters will be available from this web site
after the workshop.
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