Collaborative Research: The Europeanization of Movements

欧洲一体化进程是否将社会运动的目标从其国家政治制度转向欧洲联盟？ 或者，欧盟是否仍然孤立于国家民主政治的范围之外？ 或者是否存在第三种可能性：社会运动在特定国家有争议的政治的传统途径内回应欧盟提出的跨国问题？ 研究人员对这些问题进行了实证研究，利用了一个跨国的、纵向的、计算机可读的数据集，其中包含了1983年至1995年期间在欧盟成员国发生的约20，000起政治事件的报告。 有了这些数据，并伴随着案例研究，调查人员研究了西欧有争议的政治行动随着时间的推移不断变化的模式。 特别是，他们寻找可能的抗议欧洲化的三个方面的指标：1）在他们的研究所涵盖的12个欧洲国家内，与欧盟有关的争议行动的规模越来越大; 2）促使国内社会行为者进行针对欧盟或受欧盟刺激的争议活动的问题; 3）国内社会行动者在其诉求是对欧盟政策指令的回应时所选择的目标。 随着研究人员收集的关于欧洲化这些方面的信息，他们开发了一个运动模型-如果有一个-走向欧洲有争议的政治的跨国领域。 在欧洲案例之外，他们的调查提供了对私人社会行为者在跨国机构面前寻求发言权的方式的第一次比较评估。 此外，他们还探讨了在比较政治学中使用计算机可读编码程序处理大型在线数据集的用途和参数- -这一领域几乎没有例外，一直顽固地抵制系统的、跨国的事件历史分析。

Is the process of European integration shifting the targets of social movements from their national political systems to the European Union? Alternatively, does the EU remain isolated from the reach of national democratic politics? Or is there a third possibility: that social movements respond to the transnational issues posed by the European Union within the traditional pathways of nation-specific contentious politics? The investigators employ an empirical examination of these questions, drawing on a cross-national, longitudinal, and computer-readable dataset containing reports of some 20,000 political events which occurred in EU member countries between 1983 and 1995. With these data, and with attendant case studies the investigators examine the changing patterns of Western European contentious political action over time. In particular, they look for indicators of three facets of a possible Europeanization of protest: 1) an increasing magnitude of EU-related contentious action within twelve European nations that their research covers; 2) the issues which induce domestic social actors to undertake contentious activity aimed at or stimulated by the European Union; and, 3) the targets domestic social actors choose when their claims are responses to EU policy directives. With the information that the researchers are collecting on these facets of Europeanization, they develop a model of the movement - - if there is one - - towards a transnational realm of contentious politics in Europe. Looking beyond the European case, their investigation offers one of the first comparative assessments of the ways in which private social actors are seeking voice before transnational institutions. Additionally, they explore the uses and the parameters for employing computer-readable coding programs for large on-line datasets in comparative politics as well - - a field which, with few exceptions, has been stubbornly resistant to systematic, cross-national event history analysis.