Sociology, institutionalism and the European Union

European Union (EU) studies are dominated by a narrow form of institutionalism. The focus on formal organizations and asocial norms begs for a more sociological approach to the EU that would encompass the informal practices, symbolic representations and power relations of social actors involved in European society as well as the broad polity. This article argues for a return to the sociological roots of neo-institutionalism, which we find in Marx's theory of power, Weber's sociology of conflict and Durkheim's attention to symbolic representations and social practices. The neo-institutionalist project was originally an offspring of classical sociology. After having described how institutionalism diverged from sociology in EU studies, we review several points of contact between sociological approaches to the EU and neo-institutionalism, including the treatment of social relations and analysis of norms and ideas. While we applaud the development of sociological approaches in EU studies, we argue that paying attention to such meeting points will prove more fruitful than maintaining walls that confine institutionalism and sociology to splendid isolation.

This article is part of the special issue 'Mainstreaming sociology in EU studies'.