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Free Download Frédéric Mérand, "The Political Commissioner: A European Ethnography "
English | ISBN: 0192893971 | 2021 | 256 pages | PDF | 6 MB
Based on four years of embedded observation in the cabinet of a European Commissioner, this book develops a sociology of international political work. Empirically, it offers an insider's chronicle of the European Union between 2015 and 2019. The analysis traces the successes and failures of Commissioner Pierre Moscovici and his team on five issues that defined European politics between 2015 and 2019: the Greek crisis, budgetary disputes with Spain and Portugal, the rise of populism in Italy, the reform of the eurozone, and the fight against tax evasion. The aim is not to ascertain whether the Commission's policy was good or bad, but to understand how political work is done in a European Union where the 'spectacle of power' is blurred by 24 official languages, 28 national histories, a powerful technocracy, and sometimes opaque institutions.
As a life-long socialist politician and former French finance minister, Pierre Moscovici was perhaps the most intensely political character in Jean-Claude Juncker's self-styled 'Political Commission'. Brandishing his leftist identity, rejecting technocratic talk, he surrounded himself with staffers sharing his ambition - but also critical of his actions. Shadowing them from the corridors of the Berlaymont, the seat of the European Commission, to Washington and Athens,
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