How the European Social Fund is impacting local government: Reconfiguration of institutional relationships, redefinition of professional roles

Since the 1990s, the European Social Fund (ESF) has been one of the European Union’s main instruments of intervention in the Member States. Yet, the power issues underlying its local deployment remain poorly understood. Based on the results of their ethnographic surveys of departmental and regional administrations, the authors analyze the way in which these funds are appropriated, far from Brussels, by the agents in charge of their day-to-day management. Deconstructing an enchanted vision of “partnership”, they show that the ESF feeds competitive strategies that help reconfigure local institutional relations. They also show how this process helps to redefine bureaucratic roles, building managerial rigor at the top of the hierarchy of legitimate professional competencies.