Class Conflict as Catalyst of Trust: A New Research Agenda for International Political Sociology

More than a decade has now passed since the “Eurozone crisis.” Few words were more used than “populism” and “austerity” during this period. The former was weaponized by mainstream political forces to downgrade anyone who strived to express popular demands contra to the will of the supposedly independent markets.1 Austerity, for its part, was presented as a tough yet the only available medicine to reestablish market confidence and secure the viability and health of the financial system. The health of the markets and the financial system, however, has proved incompatible with both the health of democratic institutions and—literally—the health of citizens across Europe. The market constituency became superior to the original democratic constituency, the people.2Austerity pushed a growing number of people into poverty, especially in the peripheral countries—Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Cyprus—whereas European banks have been rescued and recapitalized. There have been major cuts to wages and pensions, social benefits, the health-care system coupled with an assault on labor rights and a massive rise in unemployment.3 The loss of prosperity and various rights produced mass anti-austerity mobilizations. The Spanish Indignados and the Greek Aganaktismenoi are perhaps the most popular cases but the Portuguese Geração à Rasca, or the Irish Occupy in Cork and Dublin and the Right2Water protests, or, finally, the Cypriot Alliance Against the Memorandum, are not insignificant. These were some of the largest mobilizations in the histories of these countries, indicating that austerity policies suffered from a lack of consensus and legitimacy.The populist character of these movements and mobilizations is to be found in their basic claim that “the people had been betrayed by the political elites, which were held responsible for the socio-economic collapse and the hollowing out of democratic institutions.”4 The populist radical-left anti-austerity wave that emerged at this juncture expressed the demand to break with the austerity policies and offer an alternative vision. Their radicalism is located precisely in their aim to fundamentally challenge the neoliberal status quo and fight for a democratic renewal in the EU.5 In this context there have been various voices that saw in left populism a chance for the “democratic refoundation of Europe.”6My aim in this article is to explore the lessons that can be learnt for left-wing populism from the last decade of crises. Drawing upon the “Essex School,” populism is understood here as a political logic marked by the discursive construction of a popular subjectivity, a “we, the people” and its antagonistic other, a “they, the establishment.”7 “The people” in this schema is always the contingent product of a process of linking together a set of unsatisfied demands expressed by diverse groups through a shared opposition. When this populist logic is coupled with a desire to get to the roots8 of the problems of the existing system and transform it, we are faced with a more or less radical articulation of populism.9My main focus will be the case of Syriza and one of the key questions here is whether populism was responsible for the debacle of the Syriza-led government in the summer of 2015. Does Syriza's defeat prove the limitations of left-wing populism at the national level in fighting against policies that have been orchestrated and coordinated at the EU level? My hypothesis is that Syriza reflects a structural limit that all left populist forces on the national level are destined to confront. The article also reflects on the possibilities of expanding populism from the national to the transnational level.Few would deny that European democracy reached a dark moment during the Eurozone crisis. The overall management of the crisis has indeed produced an ever more postdemocratic union. One can understand postdemocracy as a “democracy after the demos,”10 a situation where “politics and government are increasingly slipping back into the control of privileged elites in the manner characteristic of pre-democratic times.”11 The European Union has always been marked by a governance without government, a lack of genuine European-level contestation over policy agendas and over executive office as well as a lack of real accountability.12During the epoch of the Troika, austerity, and the memoranda, all political energy was devoted to rescuing the banks, often at the expense of people's living standards, while democratic procedures have been repeatedly sidelined. Instead of the people, decisions have been taken as closely as possible to the markets.13 My argumentation here is twofold: on one level, the crisis opened the window for the introduction of a set of mechanisms and reforms to the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), such as the Fiscal Compact and the European Semester.14 More sovereign decision-making powers have been handed to unelected bodies of the EU such as the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Stability Mechanism (ESM)/European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), and the European Commission while new disciplinary and rescue mechanisms have been created. These measures have further reduced “the scope for national discretion over spending decisions regardless of electoral preferences.”15 On the second level, the operations of the Troika, that is the European Commission, the ECB and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) responsible for the engineering, administration and monitoring of the aid packages, in the Programme Countries, namely Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Cyprus, and Spain, have been marked by a lack of transparency, to put it mildly.16 In the Programme Countries, then, a more authoritarian version of postdemocracy has developed whereas at the same time the whole Eurozone has undergone a process of strengthening and further institutionalizing postdemocracy.17What we have witnessed was a process of stripping away at democracy, a process that involved the disappearance of its basic component, “the people,” “both as an instance of symbolic legitimation and as an instance of real control.”18 It is precisely at this point that populism emerged with the aim to discursively construct a people in opposition to the power bloc—a technocratic postpolitical authority.19 Populism, in this sense, has been a response to the postdemocratic predicament and the subsequent legitimation crisis. It aspired to establish a rupture with the austerity consensus by demanding a recovery and expansion of democracy. Prodemocratic movements, such as the Indignados and Aganaktismenoi, under the slogans “they do not represent us,” “we, the people,” and “real democracy now!,” demanded the transfer of power from elites to the people.20 A left-wing, anti-austerity, populist wave was born in the wake of the economic and political crises.21 Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece, both of which had strong presence in the aforementioned movements, with Podemos spawned from the Indignados, have been considered the most paradigmatic cases of left-wing populism emerging from this wave.22At this point a critical question needs to be raised: where does the power to resist austerity reside? And the answer that was given was the nation-state. Indeed, Cristina Flesher Fominaya indicates that the return of the nation-state as the main locus of mobilization is what characterizes the anti-austerity wave and what distinguishes it from previous ones, such as the Global Justice Movement.23 Given, for example, the supranational character of the Troika, this might be surprising especially in the domain of social movements. There have been exceptions, such as the Alter Summit and Blockupy, but in general, the popular dissent against austerity was expressed with the return of the nation as the principal arena of struggle.24 In the institutional realm, this appears more reasonable because representation on the transnational level does not really exist.25Syriza's electoral triumph in Greece in January 2015 represents the peak of this wave, at least in its institutional/electoral form, as it became the first populist radical-left party in government in Europe. This gave rise to the belief that positive developments for left populist parties in Europe and in particular for Podemos in Spain and Sinn Féin in Ireland were on the way. Both of these countries were about to hold elections in the upcoming year, in December 2015 and February 2016, respectively. A European “pink tide”—à la Latin America of the 2000s when left populist governments were united under a shared anti-neoliberal agenda—was in the making. The success of such a project, though, depended largely on the outcome of Syriza's endeavor.Populism was without a doubt a defining characteristic of Syriza's discourse when in opposition and it continued occupying center stage after winning the elections.26 Syriza formed a government with Anel (Independent Greeks), a right-wing anti-austerity party with strong nationalist and arguably populist elements. Apart from the fact that this coalition proved the strength of the pro- versus anti-austerity cleavage in that particular context, we also see that for Syriza this was an opportunity to expand its social base beyond their traditional left supporters. Populism was instrumental at this point. Although the discursive approach sees the equivalential logic of populism operating at the societal/grassroots level, one could apply it here to the coalition-building process at the level of political parties.27Now, one could argue that being in government and populist at the same time constitutes a paradox because coming to power makes a populist force part of “the establishment.” Yet things are more complicated, and we should note that being in government is not necessarily synonymous with being in power. A political party in government, therefore, can still utilize a populist antagonistic logic to form its discourse. This was played out in the case of Syriza with ministers reporting that their administration was being held hostage by domestic and European politico-economic elites.28 The first six months of Syriza's tenure were marked by a confrontation between a populist form of politics aiming to represent the voice of the people, and a more institutionalist form of politics bound to protect the rules of the political game and ensure that business will continue as usual.29The continuing deadlock in the negotiations was designed to exhaust and destabilize the Syriza-led government.30 The solution to the impasse came in June 2015 when the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras announced a snap referendum on the creditors’ demands, intending to put “an end to the blackmail.”31 A campaign of terrorization of the Greek people was put in place. The ECB stopped access to the Emergency Liquidity Assistance, leading to the shutdown of the banks and the imposition of capital controls.32 The president of the Commission urged the Greek people to support the new austerity package by stressing that “you mustn't commit suicide because you are afraid of death . . . You must vote yes, independently of the question asked.”33 Mainstream public discourse in Greece, from the media to former prime ministers and even pop stars, were all pushing for a Yes vote interpreting the question as a Yes or No to Grexit.34 Syriza, for its part, insisted that the referendum concerned the terms of the Troika's ultimatum and a No vote would strengthen the negotiating position of the Greek government.35On the 5 July 2015, the Oxi (No) camp won with a resounding 61.31 percent. This No could be construed as a denial of the postdemocratic austerity consensus in the EU, without, however, “any positive indication of the way forward.”36 In other words, the Greek citizens did not know with any certainty where this No could lead them, but they knew precisely and unambiguously after five years of brutal austerity what a Yes vote would entail.However, the No meant little to the EU. After a Euro Summit on 12 July, Greece was threatened with exit from the Eurozone and forced to accept a harsher bailout agreement.37 The rationale of this outcome can be summarized in the words of Slovakia's Finance Minister, Peter Kažimir: “tough for Athens because . . . of their ‘Greek Spring.’”38 Some commented that “the dark forces of the EU have subjected Greece to a coup.”39 The hashtag #ThisIsACoup was the second top trending topic worldwide and top in Greece and Germany.40 For the Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, however, rather than being a coup this was “a typical European arrangement.” The third bailout agreement included the signature of Syriza, forcing it to implement the failed austerity policies that it had been opposing for years. Neither the radical left party nor its leader took ownership of this bailout package.41For Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's finance minister until the night of the July referendum, what followed was a “curious phenomenon of a government overthrowing its people.”42 It is ironic that Syriza's rise was mostly due to its struggle to put “the people” on the stage again and during its first term in office there was indeed a strong desire of “the people” to participate and support its government on the streets. Put differently, “the people” that Syriza called upon aspired to control its historicity, understood in Alain Touraine's terms as society's capacity for self-production, that is to “act upon themselves and produce their future.”43 With the capitulation of Syriza, “the people” were left again with a hopeless and melancholic impression that they cannot contest the course of historicity.Some argue that this traumatic experience confirms the deterministic arguments that populism always fails when in government as “its own inability to live up to its promises” is revealed.44 Indeed, some scholars responded to the capitulation of Syriza by sounding the death knell of left-wing populism.45 For instance, Cas Mudde described Syriza's debacle as “the failure of the populist promise.”46 The formal approach to populism, however, allows us to escape reductionist views that attach this phenomenon to specific outcomes or make it synonymous with demagogy and overpromising. Populism from this point of view is defined as a discursive logic that links different demands and identities into a common chain producing a popular subject, “the people,” antagonistically to an elite. One could follow Giorgos Venizelos and Yannis Stavrakakis in wondering whether it was populism responsible for Syriza's devastating outcome. As they maintain, “Syriza's failure is not rooted in its populism.”47 In fact, populism in this case flourished, because Syriza proves, on the one hand, that populism at the national level is capable of creating a chain of equivalence between diverse struggles that can lead to electoral victories. On the other hand, these victories at the national level are not enough, because the decision-making process takes place elsewhere. As such, Syriza reflects a structural limit that all left-wing populist forces in the EU countries inevitably face. Hence, to return to Mudde's blunt aphorism, it may be more accurate to characterize this defeat not as the failure of the populist promise per se, but “the failure to have a successful (progressive) populism in government, in one country.”48A circle was closed for left populism in the summer of 2015. Syriza's U-turn had a negative impact on Podemos and Sinn Féin, which had to readjust and moderate their strategy and program.49 The European “pink tide” crashed before it was even born. The defeat of Syriza reveals the limits of national politics. The dispersion of power from the national level to the supranational and intergovernmental institutions of the EU and its subsequent divorce from politics that remained tethered to the national and local levels became yet again evident.50 The hope that their remarriage can take place in one state faded. Nevertheless, there was a small but not insignificant victory of Syriza, which consists precisely in the fact that it unmasked the postdemocratic face of the EU and the ruthlessness of the authoritarian turn in the Troika countries. In so doing, it contributed to the politicization of the EU and the Europeanization of problems related to debt, banks, and poverty, which have mostly been considered national issues.Perhaps one of the most crucial lessons that this case teaches us is that under neoliberal globalization, issues of democracy, sovereignty, and mobilization have been posed anew and problems related to them—but also to debt, poverty, migration, and the environment, among others—are not national problems anymore. They are transnational ones, and thus potential solutions to them cannot be found within the narrow confines of the nation-state. This brings forward a strong normative hypothesis that those who believe in the radical democratic potential of left populism have to start thinking of this phenomenon in transnational terms.Transnational populism may sound like contradictio in terminis, in particular for those who maintain that populist politics cannot take place outside the nation-state.51 After all, it is true that the populist construction of “the people” usually takes place within a national context simply because we still live, banally speaking, in a world of nations. However, I argue that the Essex School of Discourse Analysis offers the safest path for making the idea of transnational populism thinkable.52 This is due to the detachment from particular site-specific, ideological or any other content. Put differently, there is no predetermined essence, ideas or elements that accompany “the people,” which is the always contingent outcome of bringing together heterogeneous demands and groups into a common chain.53 This can take many different routes at many different levels: from national to local and various regional levels.To better grasp the specificity of transnational populism, it is important to distinguish it from two other possible forms of populism beyond the national level, namely the international and the postnational. To begin with, the international form entails a flexible collaboration between national peoples, parties and/or movements.54 A postnational articulation of populism would strive to construct a homogeneous postnational identity that would negate the heterogeneity of national identities. It would focus on going beyond the level of the nation-state. A transnational populism, in my view, brings those two moments together; it means between, but also beyond, the nation-states, involving the construction of a popular identity that, although it moves beyond the national borders, does not aim to replace national identities but rather to supplement them.55 Whereas both and postnational a common in one postnational in the transnational populism entails “a people” that is as a of a postnational populism are yet to cases of international and transnational populism do One is the of is to Syriza's It was formed as a response to what after the July With an on an international against the elites across the ECB and the aspired to with this gave its place to a more against the EU, with many involved in this the position of the EU and going back to the As the national arena and it is As such, international populism in a between national national peoples, which in a of national politics without the to beyond this of the moment of Syriza's is a paradigmatic case of transnational This was by the Yanis and the and political in February the from the national to the transnational level as the main arena of This was mostly by the failure of national to have any real The aim of has been to expand the populist of the anti-austerity wave to the European level by a Indeed, the demand to the back to democracy against the European Union that sees people power as a to its with the demand for an EU that the people not against the people” the populist character of In a more formal discourse is upon the populist logic an antagonistic between two opposing “we, the people” and “they, the establishment.” The idea put forward is that there is an to beyond the of national to an alternative and thus to construct a transnational people in the of democracy against what they as transnational people that to construct is of and “the all those who from austerity, the and genuine the other end of the the elites that the a of and institutions both national and transnational logic is the of the status national and transnational elites, the without It is crucial to note that a transnational fight against both national and transnational of discourse that in this article is the idea of a that this to to popular democratic and even to national are often but for the only be through struggles that are the European at the European level with “a sovereign European people” is presented as the for the of at the national A of is because “the of and . . . is no with a democratic As to the that such as national still is is with the of a European people and it an has taken place in the EU on the one hand, a further of postdemocracy with the of the executive with the of national as well as with the Europeanization of the policies the European and the Fiscal On the other hand, the Troika's in the Programme a more authoritarian turn with an and of It is this context of economic and political that populism back on the The radical left populist anti-austerity wave, from the various movements and mobilizations to the electoral played an important in the produced by the policies of austerity and the with formal politics due to the way that the crisis was into to the hollowing out of the people, left-wing populism the by discursively a people and demanding to put the back into failure of Syriza forces us to the limits of populism, or more of populism on the national The construction of “a people” at the national level is not to fight against policies that have been orchestrated and coordinated at the EU The main point here is that you have an you to to up to and the is the neoliberal one needs to on the transnational level, because these are transnational This might that we new forms of radical politics that the transnational level, not only to get to the of the but also to them and produce real populism can be as a In this I have on the specificity of transnational populism, that a transnational people does not a postnational that would national identities. It would rather with diverse national leading to a of shared This is in the discourse of that is the populist antagonistic a common identity that, although going beyond national does not aim to replace national offers a key case for the phenomenon of transnational populism, its potential and its The fact that forces like have to within a world where the nation-state is still makes the construction of a transnational people a This with its and might electoral in the European a that beyond the scope of this On a more positive such can to the of an transnational public where political their for Europe as well as to the expansion of democratic politics on the EU Although might not be to the of Europe and the fight for a more democratic EU in this of transnational populist mobilizations.

This article examines how the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) catalyzed cross‐border labor cooperation and collaboration (i.e., labor transnationalism), by creating a new political opportunity structure at the transnational level. Because there are differences in the way power is constituted at the transnational and national levels, theories of national political opportunity structures cannot be directly mapped onto the transnational level. The author describes three primary dimensions of political opportunity structure at the transnational level that explain how power is established: (1) the constitution of transnational actors and interests, (2) the definition and recognition of transnational rights, and (3) adjudication at the transnational level. The case of NAFTA suggests that while the emergence of national social movements requires nation‐states, global governance institutions can play a pivotal role in the development of transnational social movements.

A critical review of climate change mitigation policies in the EU ——based on vertical, horizontal and policy instrument perspectives

Why are some advocacy group populations biased towards business interest representatives? In this paper, we assess an underexplored source of variation in advocacy populations, namely the governance level at which advocacy populations are located. More precisely, we analyse whether national advocacy group populations are more likely to contain relatively large proportions of business interest associations compared to transnational advocacy group populations. We examine three competing hypotheses: (1) biases are stronger at the national level than the global level, (2) biases are more pronounced at the global level than the national level and (3) no differences emerge in business mobilization across the national and transnational levels. We test our hypotheses based on a novel dataset of national, European Union (EU) and global advocacy group populations. Our results indicate that the global level is different from the EU and national levels, in that it contains relatively low proportions of business interest representatives.

This article deals with the use of ICTs in national and transnational mobilizations. The case study under investigation is the Euro Mayday Parade (EMP) against precarity, which occurred at both the national and transnational level. The articles focus on three aspects of social movement activities. First, organizational processes in which ICTs are used at both the national and transnational level of the EMP in combination with face-to-face interactions, which play an important role in sustaining protest planning. Second, identification processes in which ICTs have a more important impact at the transnational level than at the national level of the EMP. Third, ICTs are not only seen as opportunities but also as challenges that activist groups involved in the EMP had to deal with in the preparation of the EMP. In presenting these results, the article suggests that a comparison between the national and transnational level of the same protest campaign could highlight new aspects in the use of ICTs, which deserve further investigation.

Liberal democracies have begun to use organizations other than classic public bureaucracies to provide public services. This highly original work is the first to provide a comparative analysis of such organizations in Western Europe. It examines parallels between para-government organizations at the national level, and similar organizations at the municipal and transnational level. It offers a theoretical rationale for para-government organizations in terms of transactional analysis. Why have modern governments adopted such a model of delivering services? What are the problems, limits, and possibilities of providing services thorough this form of organization? What are the similarities and differences in the use of such organizations within Western Europe? Are there parallels between the growth of para-government organizations at the national level and similar developments at both the municipal and transnational levels? This important volume draws on studies of six countries, four cities, and three kinds of transnational organizations to answer these questions. Essential reading for scholars and students of comparative politics, public administration, and Western Europe. A comprehensive and well-structured book. --Political Studies

Based on the framework of multi-scalar analysis, this article investigates the impacts of party politics on interregional development and governance by looking at the case of Taiwan, 1994–2008. It argues that the development of political democratization in Taiwan since the mid-1990s, although facilitated by the transformation of party politics, was disassociated with an interregional political divide and had complicated the governance issues of interregional transformation at national and transnational levels in Taiwan. The multiple conflicting forces and processes of party politics unexpectedly fragmented the political governances of interregional development at national and transnational levels and impacted its future development.

Inadequate funding is a common and longstanding concern for local public park and recreation agencies. Traditionally, these services are funded predominantly through tax-based allocations, supplemented by other streams such as earned revenue, dedicated levies, and sponsorship agreements. Cost-cutting measures such as outsourcing, overall staffing reductions, and an increasing reliance on a parttime workforce have also become increasingly common in the context of local park and recreation service delivery. Partnership with nonprofit organizations represents another potential strategy to adequately fund local park and recreation services.Partnerships between local park and recreation agencies and nonprofit park and recreation foundations have a long history, and help support local park and recreation agencies in a variety of capacities. Their importance may also be growing as a function of the decline in tax-based support and earned revenue due to both the Great Recession and the global COVID-19 pandemic. Such partnerships are not unique to local parks and recreation however, and are common—and widely studied—at the national and transnational level. Despite their importance to local park and recreation service delivery, and the established body of knowledge examining these partnerships at the national and transnational level, the local agency-foundation relationship remains understudied. In this manuscript we begin to address this gap by providing a clearer picture of the agency-foundation relationship, and identifying strategies for how local park and recreation agencies can most effectively leverage these partnerships. To do so, we employ a qualitative research method, interviewing leaders from both local public park and recreation agencies and nonprofit park foundations. Results illustrate a variety of motivations for initiating an agency-foundation relationship (funding/capacity, deteriorating conditions, and equity), as well as a number of distinct benefits of such a partnership (increased operational capacity, advocacy and outreach, expertise, and non-governmental status). Respondents also identified various characteristics of a successful agency-foundation relationship (effective communication, clear roles and responsibilities, strong connections, and flexibility/responsiveness), and challenges to success (competition for scarce resources, and equity). Based on these results, we propose several strategies to help local park and recreation agencies maximize these partnerships (communicate frequently and with purpose, build relationships, formalize ties, and strive for equitable outcomes).

Whilst a body of work exists that has engaged with and conceptualised transnational fields, and in particular for this paper, the transnational field of human rights, more work needs to be done to elaborate on the effects of transnational fields, at the national level. Using Bourdieu's field theory, and more recent scholarship that focuses on scalar aspects of fields, this research focuses on a human rights field at the national level in Bahrain. The paper addresses two levels/dimensions of the transnational field of human rights: the transnational level and the national level, focussing on the field's vertical autonomy. Based upon nineteen in-depth interviews, the research retrieves the biographical trajectories of Bahraini human rights activists and activists from iNGOs with a specific remit that includes Bahrain. The paper argues that the vertical autonomy of the transnational field of human rights has demonstrable field effects at the national level, and that this has a number of implications. First, where transnational fields have greater vertical autonomy, the national level can operate with varying hierarchies, with actors adopting practices that diverge from those acting transnationally. Second, as a result of these scalar differences and the vertical autonomy of the transnational field, actors at the national level may have to adapt their practices, others can be side-lined as a result of 'symbolic pollution.' Third, in order for local actors to engage with transnational advocacy networks, they must be the right type of actor.

With the admission of Bulgaria and Rumania into the EU, one of the most serious challenges with which the European Parliament is confronted nowadays is the increased number of official languages within the EU. Therefore, some realists insist that the number of official languages should be reduced in the EU or that the English should be the sole official language in the European Parliament. However, bestowing such a great power and prestige on the language of two nations(US and UK) may cause the rage or complain of the different non-Anglophone European member states. The English as a king of languages is already acknowledged as the most popular and attractive foreign language not only in Europe, but also in the world. Nonetheless, giving the special political privilege into English as one of the 27 official languages of the EU must be discussed separately from simply using English in the sectors of business, tourism and education. The aim of this paper is to examine the language conflicts within the EU. Only English as a single official language in the EU or multilingualism which is linguistic and cultural diversity-oriented? As for language conflicts which become more serious in the confederal EU, having one working language(English) may be the most realistic solution to reduce the high cost of translation and interpretation in the EU. Leonard Orban, Commissioner for Multilingualism, refutes this solution in saying “Multilingual use is a necessary cost of maintaining EU's democracy.” Not only in the EU institutions, but also in the sectors of business, advertising and science, etc. the importance of the English is unprecedentedly increased during recent decades. This phenomenon means that the imperial English tends to restrict more or less the position of the French and the German as two different lingua francas. Speaking basically, the EU started as a counterpart to obstruct the US hegemony in the world, but does the dominance of the English in the EU correspond to the interests of the EU?The dominance of the English can be explained by two historic/linguistic reasons. First, great nations (US, UK and ex-Soviet Union) who won a big victory during the Second World War divided the Europe into two capitalist and socialist parts. But the control of the France as the fourth winner was relatively weak. Therefore, the US and the UK could establish the dominant position of the English. Second, There are also linguistic reasons. It seems that English is easier to learn and to speak because of its grammar. The English sentences are often shorter and more concise in comparison to French and German. After the decline of the ex-Soviet Union, the US became the only significant world power. Thus, the US' position is unparalleled in economy, politics, science, technology and pop culture, etc. This paper treats the importance of the EU languages(that is, linguistic diversity in the EU), the linguistic position(if not hegemony) of the two nations(France and Germany) in the EU, particularly in favor of the European multilingual policy, closely related into the European identity. Centering on the multilingualism at which the EU aims, it examines not only the overwhelming dominance of the English in the EU, but also the historic and linguistic reasons of the dominance of the English in the post-colonial period. A. De Swaan divides the communication in the EU into four levels: national level, transnational level, EU's institutional level(European Parliament) and the Commission's internal bureaucracy. In order to awaken or inspire the true sense of the European identity in the mind of the EU citizens, it is necessary to adopt the multilingualism at the heart of the EU on the transnational level.

In Europe, a cosmopolitan legal order was instantiated through the combined impact of Protocol no. 11 of the ECHR (1998), and the incorporation of the Convention into national legal systems. As a result, two processes—(i) the evolution of constitutional pluralism at the national level; and (ii) the development of rights protection at the transnational level—became causally connected to one another. The first undermined traditional models of domestic orders wherein the notions of constitutional unity and centralized sovereignty reinforced one another. The second process created a multi-level legal system whose effectiveness depends on the extent to which the European Court is able to induce and sustain the cooperation of national courts and officials. The constitutionalization of the proportionality principle, at both the domestic and transnational levels, provided a doctrinal interface for inter-jurisdictional dialogue, and the collective enforcement of the UPR.

Issue 22 - Considering the transnational prominence of European cinema, European crime films present an interesting case. As a genre, crime “is clearly the most popular genre across Europe for novels, television series and films”, and crime fiction productions are abundant on a national level in most European countries (Bondebjerg et al. 223). Crime fiction, therefore, appears as the genre most able to facilitate transborder cultural exchange and communicate “Europeanness” at local, national, regional, and transnational levels. This is surely the case of television productions where “crime drama seems to be a powerful, cross-cultural phenomenon with the noteworthy possibility of travelling internationally” (Hansen et al. 3). However, while crime novels and television series have been receiving much critical attention—especially within the context of Nordic Noir—crime films are absent from most of the scholarly discussions and struggle to gain cross-border popularity. It can be argued that crime drama on television has profited from a changed transnational production and distribution culture which has not benefited European crime films in the same way.

Global economic governance outcomes in areas such as corporate taxation may be influenced by transnational policy communities acting at national and transnational levels. Yet, while transnational tax policy processes are increasingly analyzed through the politics of expertise, national preferences have usually been derived from domestic interest group preferences. We know little about how technical expertise interacts with interest group politics at national level, an important deficit given the sovereignty-preserving, decentralized way in which transnational tax norms become hard law. This article examines the drivers of expansion of the UK’s bilateral tax treaty network in the 1970s, which cannot be explained solely through monolithic interest group politics. Evidence from the British national archives demonstrates how tax experts in the civil service and the private sector, members of a transnational policy community, used tax treaties to impose OECD standards for taxing British firms on host countries, at times overruling the preferences of other political, bureaucratic and business actors. Expertise politics and business power may shape the development of norms and focal points within a transnational policy community, but it is often their interaction at domestic level that determines the implementation of transnational norms as hard law.

Considering the transnational prominence of European cinema, European crime films present an interesting case. As a genre, crime “is clearly the most popular genre across Europe for novels, television series and films”, and crime fiction productions are abundant on a national level in most European countries (Bondebjerg et al. 223). Crime fiction, therefore, appears as the genre most able to facilitate transborder cultural exchange and communicate “Europeanness” at local, national, regional, and transnational levels. This is surely the case of television productions where “crime drama seems to be a powerful, cross-cultural phenomenon with the noteworthy possibility of travelling internationally” (Hansen et al. 3). However, while crime novels and television series have been receiving much critical attention—especially within the context of Nordic Noir—crime films are absent from most of the scholarly discussions and struggle to gain cross-border popularity. It can be argued that crime drama on television has profited from a changed transnational production and distribution culture which has not benefited European crime films in the same way.

Transnational History in the field of urban planning largely focused on the first half of the twentieth century (Saunier, Ewen, 2009), although recent works deal with post-war period or after (Planning Perspective, vol. 29, n°2, 2014). The growing role of centralised policies after 1945 explains this, particularly in the case of France or United Kingdom. Nevertheless, it would be abusive to consider that everything came from State administrations. Created in order to advise States, some international organisations reveal, through their works, an another history of transnational exchanges of planning ideas. We offer here to hightlight the work and influence of the OECD on urban planning matters during the 1970s, using the archives of the organisation, located in its headquarter in Paris. At first glance, the institution has nothing to do with planning. In fact, when it was created in 1961, the OECD had no interest on this regard. But in 1969, driven by its new General Secretay, Emile van Lennep, the organisation launched a fundemental environmental turn. Within a new Directorate, a 'Sector Group on the Urban Environment' was created in 1971 whose purpose was to exchange national experiences that could help to improve life in urban areas. Its first assessment was provocatively entitled « exclusion of automobile trafic in downtown areas ». Active throughout the 1970s, the Group worked on many subjects, always using the same method. First, experts had to identify the best local experiences (local level) in order to combine results (transnational level) and finaly make recommandations to States administrations (national level). This way to articulate scales is uncommon for history of exchanges of planning ideas, showing the facilitating role of an international organisation on this regard. This presentation will first contextualise the environmental turn of the organisation that explains its concern about the 'urban environment' and give an overview of the activity of the Sector Group. Then, through the exemple of its first assessment (traffic free areas), it will show the working methods of the group, its contacts at local, national and international levels and the way the organisation dissiminate its conclusions and recommendations. Finally, the presentation will show that, even in such a centralised country as France, the State administration borrowed ideas from OECD's works as a basis for offical acts, suggesting that urban matters had no borders.