European Integration and the Politics of Scale

A Gender Perspective

Book Chapter appearing in Gendering European Integration Theory

  • Co-Author:
  • Sabine Lang with Birgit Sauer
  • Publisher: Coumbia University Press
  • Date: May, 2016
Gendering European Integration Theory

European integration operates by rescaling the political. Through the prism of integration, traditionally nation-state-centric politics appear as only one of the many-layered and intersecting spaces in which policy-making, political participation, and civic activism occur. This chapter advances the argument that the politics of scale in the European Union remain undertheorized. Theories of federalism or multi-level governance conceptualize levels (and not scales) primarily as either institutional (federalist) or as levels of organized interest (governance) politics. However, what drives European integration is a messy set of multi-scalar and inter-scalar policy processes in a plurality of spaces with many more entry and resistance…