Stephanie Lee Mudge

Building Europe on a Weak Field: Law, Economics, and Scholarly Avatars in Transnational Politics1

The present article mobilizes the concepts of “weak field” and “avatar” to explain Europe’s historically variable meanings, analyzing two successful reinventions (as a “community of law” and a “single market”) and one failure (“social Europe”). Focusing on law and economics, the authors first show that the weak field of EU studies serves as a crossroads between nationally anchored scholarly professions and Europe’s political field; second, they show that under certain conditions legal and economic constructions have exerted performative effects via scholarly avatars. Depending on their strategic positioning, scholarly avatars facilitate symbolic exchange across political, technocratic, and scholarly boundaries and endow theoretical constructions with performative potential.

Fielding supranationalism: the European Central Bank as a field effect

The European Central Bank (ECB), like all European institutions, poses basic problems of definition and comparability. Mobilizing Bourdieusian field theory (BFT) to resolve them, we map out the ECB...

What's Left of Leftism?: Neoliberal Politics in Western Party Systems, 1945-2004

A novel brand of laissez-faire that lay outside the political mainstream in the early postwar years was broadly hailed at the dawn of the twenty-first century as the common sense of a global age. Yet how to understand neoliberalism as a specifically political thing, especially in the unlikely terrains of Western European and leftist politics, is unclear. This article mobilizes field theory to conceptualize and investigate neoliberal politics in Western democracies, treating the left-right axis as a variable but fundamental organizing dichotomy over which mainstream political parties exert a unique definitional influence. To trace how this dichotomy has shifted over time, I develop a novel index of political neoliberalism using data on the electoral programs of mainstream parties across 22 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries between 1945 and 2004. I find that between the 1970s and 2004 a revised political center emerged, featuring a new concept of state responsibility and the means by which it should govern: a historical shift that took root across the left-right spectrum among mainstream parties and that was as much in evidence in Continental, Nordic, and southern countries as in Anglo-liberal countries. The overall trend can be fairly characterized as the rise of a specifically neoliberal politics. I suggest that a full explanation requires both a political sociology and a sociology of knowledge, attending to the organizational and cultural bases of Western party systems.

Explaining Political Tunnel Vision: Politics and Economics in Crisis-Ridden Europe, Then and Now

The grip of austerity in European politics since 2008 presents a double puzzle: electorally weak center-left parties offering no definite alternative, and the surprisingly efficient pursuit of “fiscal consolidation”. To understand this double puzzle this article investigates the institutional bases of alternative economic thinking during the 1930s versus the post-2008 crisis years. Noting the recent prominence of a new social type, the European economist-technocrat ( eet ), I highlight the historically specific order to which the eet is indigenous: rarefied, international professional circuits that tend to work over, not through, party politics. This contrasts sharply with the nationally-based, party-connected economists who developed new economic orthodoxies between the 1930s and 1960s, including Keynes himself. Approaching the study of economic culture in the public sphere in a Polanyian moral markets framework, I argue that the linkages between European economics and financial technocracies help to explain Europe’s double puzzle. Theoretically, I argue that a focus on expertise and parties, and not just states, is central to our understanding of economic culture in the public sphere.

Leftism Reinvented: Western Parties from Socialism to Neoliberalism

Professional appointments (post-PhD) 2018-present Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of California, Davis, 2009-2018 Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of California, Davis 2013 -2014 Research Fellow, Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI), UK 2008-2009 Postdoctoral Fellow, Max Planck Institute (MPIfG), Cologne, Germany 2007-2008 Max Weber Fellow, European University Institute (EUI), Florence, Italy

For a First-Person Political Economy: A Comment on Michael McCarthy’s Dismantling Solidarity

Michael McCarthy’s Dismantling Solidarity takes on a massive phenomenon—the marketization or financialization of American retirement pensions since the New Deal, which has special significance in a context in which, as McCarthy notes, about half of households with heads aged 55 and older have no retirement savings whatsoever (McCarthy, 2017: 2)—in an extraordinarily tightlywrapped way. I like a well-defined puzzle, and here McCarthy doesn’t disappoint: the general concern is the “market-oriented” reform, or “marketization” of pensions over time, and what this process can tell us about the “character of welfare states”; this is then broken down into three episodes—namely, the establishment of a collectively-bargained occupational pension system after the Second World War (instead of Social Security increases); the consolidation of employers’ control and shift of pension funds into stock market investments; and the shift from defined benefit (DB) plans to defined contribution (DC) plans (like 401Ks) in the 1970s and 1980s—such that, from a high of 60%, only 20% of the workforce now has DB plans (McCarthy, 2017: 3). From this tidy start McCarthy develops an equally well-formulated causal account that makes the important, and arguably overdue, move of reintroducing the traditional, capitalism-centered concerns of political economy into the post-Esping-Andersen analysis of welfare states. The account hinges on three “interdependent factors”: first, “politics” or, more specifically, the increasing footprint of the state in industrial relations; second, the bipartisan commitments of politicians to growth by short-circuiting crises of capital accumulation and threats to American hegemony; and third, the contingent “balance of class forces” (unions and firms)—or, stated in a straightforwardly Marxian way, the dynamics of class struggle (McCarthy, 2017: 4). So, we might summarize the overall argument thus: marketization was a combined effect of state intervention, the structural imperatives imposed by capital (not, mind you, capitalists) on political actors, and the contingent back-and-forth of class struggle. McCarthy notes, rightly I think, that there is no shortage of state-centered or class strugglesensitive work in welfare state analysis (e.g., in the work of political institutionalists like Ann Orloff [Orloff, 1993; Morgan and Orloff, 2017] and power resources scholars like Walter Korpi [1983]), but these lines of thinking can appear to “implicitly” dismiss or de-emphasize crisiscentered theories and analyses of the welfare state that were “articulated most forcefully” by

The National Origins of Policy Ideas: Knowledge Regimes in the United States, France, Germany, and DenmarkThe National Origins of Policy Ideas: Knowledge Regimes in the United States, France, Germany, and Denmark, by CampbellJohn L.PedersenOveK.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. 401 pp.

a product of a particular American, JudeoChristian experience during the second half of the twentieth century. Cadge suggests that we should not be alarmed by spirituality’s inability to replace divisive religious traditions with an inclusive alternative. Rather than minimizing differences, she suggests that our social institutions should welcome and negotiate increasing religious diversity. In this, Cadge sheds light on the new face of faith in America and on the contemporary realities of religious meaning-making: it is messy, evolving, professionalized, simultaneously institutionalized and individualized; and it creeps up in unexpected places. It draws from multiple traditions, helps people bridge some differences but retains others, and is accompanied by enduring ambivalence. There are other important findings from Cadge’s observations in intensive care units. Cadge ends the book with very specific policy recommendations to those involved in spiritual care delivery in hospitals. Future research may consider whether these recommendations are relevant to other secular contexts where religion is negotiated: schools, the military, prisons, etc. The book also has a superb methodological appendix; its frank account of how Cadge developed her project and how her questions evolved in light of practical hurdles of access and cooperation should be of interest to all qualitative researchers. In sum, this is a carefully and rigorously researched, well-written book that would be of interest to sociologists of religion, medical sociologists, scholars who study organizations and processes of professionalization, and those interested in spiritual care in secular institutions. It can be used for both graduate and undergraduate courses in the sociology of religion and medicine. The National Origins of Policy Ideas: Knowledge Regimes in the United States, France, Germany, and Denmark, by John L. Campbell and Ove K. Pedersen. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. 401 pp.

85.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780691161167.

85.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780691161167.

[Book Review] Gerhards, Jürgen: Cultural Overstretch? Differences between Old and New Member States of the EU and Turkey (Oxon: Routledge, 2007)

Frymer also conceives “the state” as an arena of struggle (an argument reminiscent of Poulantzas’ work), hence, politics for Frymer is extremely important. Lastly, and perhaps the most important theoretical and substantive point in Frymer’s account, power is deemed as working through institutions such as the Courts or the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Rather than positing a priori that these institutions “simply reflect the interest of the powerful,” Frymer argues they “can take a life of their own and have an independent causal effect on how power is attained and manifested” (p. 9). Frymer shows that the Wagner Act, and the institutions it created, ultimately failed as they became the “Magna Carta for White Labor.” This institutionalization of white labor power in the NLRB forced the civil rights community—particularly the NAACP, to find redress for discrimination in the Courts. This path, combined with the limited power of the civil rights enforcement agencies created years later (e.g., the EEOC), almost guaranteed, along with several laws enacted for different purposes (see Chapter Four), the expansion of the “legal state” as the place to settle civil rights concerns. Based on this analysis, Frymer concludes that the labor and civil rights communities will have to “rely less on mobilizing and organizing and more on a frank recognition of the realities of democratic representation” (p. 139) to advance their common interests. And it was precisely the conclusion of the book that made me go hum, as I believe exactly the opposite! Frymer’s conclusion is derived from his concern with how things might have been rather than how they were. He laments how the Democratic Party split its labor and civil rights concerns rather than understanding that this was what was in the historical cards. Had Frymer followed his own argument about racism and institutional power a few years back, he would have concluded that this bifurcation of power was the logical outcome of how race and class had operated in America. Accordingly, unlike Frymer, I do not put my faith on the “realities of democratic representation” and the messiness of democratic politics for progressive social change. Instead, I believe that in order to create an inclusive democracy that reflects labor, race, and gender interests in its political institutions, we need more social movements and more organizational work. And the movements and the actors I envision that will push democracy forward will be, like they have been in the past, mostly outside formal organizations (Frymer limits his analysis of “social movements” to organized labor and the NAACP which excludes the multiple examples of less “organized” and equally important forms of social mobilization). Despite my criticisms, this book deserves to be widely read. Frymer’s systematic analysis and clear exposition alone make this book required reading for sociologists interested in politics, political sociology, state and social policy, social movements, and race matters in general.

Cultural Overstretch? Differences Between Old and New Member States of the EU and TurkeyCultural Overstretch? Differences Between Old and New Member States of the EU and Turkey, by GerhardsJürgen. New York: Routledge, 2007. 208 pp.

Frymer also conceives “the state” as an arena of struggle (an argument reminiscent of Poulantzas’ work), hence, politics for Frymer is extremely important. Lastly, and perhaps the most important theoretical and substantive point in Frymer’s account, power is deemed as working through institutions such as the Courts or the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Rather than positing a priori that these institutions “simply reflect the interest of the powerful,” Frymer argues they “can take a life of their own and have an independent causal effect on how power is attained and manifested” (p. 9). Frymer shows that the Wagner Act, and the institutions it created, ultimately failed as they became the “Magna Carta for White Labor.” This institutionalization of white labor power in the NLRB forced the civil rights community—particularly the NAACP, to find redress for discrimination in the Courts. This path, combined with the limited power of the civil rights enforcement agencies created years later (e.g., the EEOC), almost guaranteed, along with several laws enacted for different purposes (see Chapter Four), the expansion of the “legal state” as the place to settle civil rights concerns. Based on this analysis, Frymer concludes that the labor and civil rights communities will have to “rely less on mobilizing and organizing and more on a frank recognition of the realities of democratic representation” (p. 139) to advance their common interests. And it was precisely the conclusion of the book that made me go hum, as I believe exactly the opposite! Frymer’s conclusion is derived from his concern with how things might have been rather than how they were. He laments how the Democratic Party split its labor and civil rights concerns rather than understanding that this was what was in the historical cards. Had Frymer followed his own argument about racism and institutional power a few years back, he would have concluded that this bifurcation of power was the logical outcome of how race and class had operated in America. Accordingly, unlike Frymer, I do not put my faith on the “realities of democratic representation” and the messiness of democratic politics for progressive social change. Instead, I believe that in order to create an inclusive democracy that reflects labor, race, and gender interests in its political institutions, we need more social movements and more organizational work. And the movements and the actors I envision that will push democracy forward will be, like they have been in the past, mostly outside formal organizations (Frymer limits his analysis of “social movements” to organized labor and the NAACP which excludes the multiple examples of less “organized” and equally important forms of social mobilization). Despite my criticisms, this book deserves to be widely read. Frymer’s systematic analysis and clear exposition alone make this book required reading for sociologists interested in politics, political sociology, state and social policy, social movements, and race matters in general.