When Sector Meets Territory: The Case of European Union Wine Policy

Abstract

Studies of sectorial government seldom theorize its relationship to territory, i.e. to constructed, institutionalized but nevertheless contingent political spaces. This is particularly problematic in research on European integration—a process largely driven by the progressive institutionalization of sectors and its considerable reterritorializing effects. This article seeks to relaunch debate on sector-territory relations by proposing a constructivist and institutionalist approach to the ‘political work’ of sectorial and extra-sectorial actors. Territory impacts upon this work by being simultaneously a jurisdiction, a constituency for political representation and a stock of symbolic resources. This three-pronged definition is then applied to explain a recent reform of the European Union's wine policy that was 20 years in the making. Contrary to material determinist or organizational readings of this change, its causes are to be found in how actors strove to reinstitutionalize the European wine sector's relationship to territory, and this whilst legitimating both this political project and themselves.