Prof. Paolo Graziano ECH visiting professor at the Department of Sociology in May 2024 here in Vienna will give a lecture on
The Politics of the EU Eco-Social Policies: the Challenges of the Green Deal
The lecture will take place at the Department of Sociology on May 14th at 14:00-15:30 in the 4th Floor. Below the abstract and attached the paper which will serve as a basis for discussion.
ABSTRACT
Over the past years, the debate over the need to address ecological and social concerns has grown substantially. Phenomena such as the Gilets Jaunes in France or the ecological vs. social disputes in industrial sites (such as, for example, the ILVA steel plant in Taranto) have constituted a trade-off in terms of potentially conflicting policies, making the understanding of the various underlying preferences very important. Furthermore, growing environmental concerns have challenged more traditional views anchored on the predominance of social and employment concerns. The paper, in line with the research questions raised in the introduction of this Symposium, intends to contribute to the above-mentioned debate addressing the following questions: did the European Union take an ‘eco-social’ path? If so, how and why? By adoptin a post-functionalist approach, the article illustrates the growing intertwining of social and environmental policies at the EU level and then tries to explain its genesis by focusing on the role of the various actors involved. The main argument is that the European Commission, and in particular the President of the Commission, developed an eco-social agenda and are supporting EU eco-social policies in order to obtain further institutional (i.e, internal) and socio-political (i.e., external) legitimation.
Prof. Paolo Graziano, PhD
Paolo Graziano holds the position of Professor of Political Science at the University of Padua and serves as a Research Associate at the European Social Observatory in Brussels. His academic journey includes guest appointments at several prestigious institutions, such as Cornell University, the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, Sciences Po Paris, the University of Melbourne, the University of Washington, the European University Institute, the University of Roskilde, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of California Berkeley. He plays a pivotal role as the co-editor of Governance since 2018 and was the President during the 2019-2020 term for the APSA Conference Group on Italian Politics (CONGRIPS). Graziano’s research, which delves into European integration, public policy within Europe, social movements, and populist political factions, has been published or is forthcoming in a wide array of scholarly journals.
