Institutions and Actors: Rationality, Reflexivity, and the Study of the EU

Sociological research on the European Union provides a much needed alternative to mainstream EU-studies dominated by economics, law, IR and political science. However, until now this sociological alternative has mostly involved the adaptation of sociological terminology such as “social construction” or “identity” and the introduction of new objects of research, such as the social conventions regulating national security or the discursive constructions of Europe. Sociological theory also provides the tools for a more fundamental re-evaluation of some of the ontological and epistemological presuppositions of EU research and a corresponding reconstruction of the object of study of European studies. In this article, we will suggest a sociological framework by exploring key notions such as rationality and reflexivity. It is our claim that these are the tools necessary for explaining what remains one of the biggest issues of European studies, namely the interplay of European institutions and actors both within the Brussels game and across national frontiers. These epistemological and ontological presuppositions prevent a great deal of research based on the same presuppositions and the dualisms they produce (individualinstitution, socialization-calculation, supranational-national, etc.) from developing a more complex, “thick” description, of EU integration.