Doctorat en sciences sociales, politiques et économiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Dans les années 1931-32, les disputes à propos du traité de Versailles accompagnent la montée du fascisme et de la Grande Dépression en Allemagne. Les dirigeants anglosaxons ont justifié leur appui du Reich par leurs opinions publiques et des historiens ont expliqué que ces dernières s’étaient bercées d’illusions sur les enjeux allemands. Mais quelles étaient et d’où provenaient-elles ? Notre étude de quotidiens français, américains et britanniques montre qu’elles n’étaient pas uniquement constituées d’erreurs d’appréciation des réalités objectives, mais aussi de faits occultés, d’inventions, d’une guerre médiatique justifiant les choix de certains dirigeants financiers et politiques anglo-saxons. La diffusion rapide des mêmes inventions des deux côtés de l’Atlantique suggère l’existence de canaux de « fabrique d’opinions » entre l’Allemagne, la Grande-Bretagne, et les États-Unis. / During the years 1931-32, international disputes about the Treaty of Versailles accompanied the rise of fascism and Great Depression in Germany. Leaders of the Anglo-Saxon powers justified their support of the Reich by public opinions. Historians have said that the latters were deluded about German issues, but what were those illusions and where do they came from ? This comparison of British, American and French newspapers shows that they were not only made from wrong assessments of objective realities, but also from hidden facts or inventions, even a media war serving to justify some financial and political choices. The fast dissemination of the same inventions on both sides of the Atlantic also suggest the existence of priviledged channels of « opinion fabrics » from Germany, to and between Britain and the United States.

En 1999 et 2002, deux marées noires causées par les naufrages des pétroliers Erika et Prestige ont révélé les limites de l’auto-régulation de l’industrie maritime. Au cours des années 2000, les institutions européennes ont réagi à ces désastres en plaçant le problème de la prévention des accidents en mer parmi leurs priorités. Comment expliquer qu’un enjeu aussi technique que la sécurité maritime ait fait l’objet d’un tel traitement alors que des décisions majeures devaient être prises concernant, notamment, l’élargissement et la constitutionnalisation de l’Union européenne? Quels résultats les changements adoptés ont-ils permis d’atteindre? Par l’utilisation de la technique du suivi de processus, l’explication historique proposée dans cette étude de cas souligne l’importance de la séquence des évènements et de la stratégie des acteurs dans le processus de politisation : le fait que le Prestige ait coulé au moment où les mesures prises à la suite de l’Erika venaient d’être mises en application a légitimé les propositions de la Commission Prodi en faveur d’une meilleure maîtrise de la mondialisation. En s’inspirant des travaux d’Ostrom relatifs à la gouvernance des biens communs, à la coordination et à la polycentricité, l’analyse des changements se structure autour du concept d’adaptation. Par la déclinaison d’engagements crédibles, l’adaptation vise la mise en cohérence des activités cognitives relatives à l’apprentissage et des activités de redistribution des ressources. La comparaison du contenu des politiques entre le début et la fin des années 2000 montre la plus-value d’une agence de régulation, l’Agence européenne pour la sécurité maritime, pour accroître les capacités adaptatives du système de politiques. Depuis son commencement en 2002, l’agencification a en effet impliqué la mise en place d’instruments sophistiqués de suivi, le renforcement des capacités de mise en œuvre des politiques par les administrations nationales et la valorisation de données probantes pour justifier la contrainte envers les États membres et les acteurs économiques privés ne respectant pas les engagements européens. Un mode de coordination nouveau se dessinerait en filigrane de ces changements de politiques, une coordination basée sur le partage de l’expertise et servant l’européanisation des politiques publiques. / In 1999 and 2002, oil spills caused by tankers Erika and Prestige have revealed the limits of self-regulation of the maritime industry. During the 2000s, the European institutions have responded to these policy failures by placing the problem of maritime safety among their top priorities. How to explain that such a « hard issue » has been set up to the European agenda while major decisions should be made, particularly concerning the enlargement and the constitutionalisation of the European Union? What are the results achieved thanks to these policy changes? By using process tracing, historical explanation highlights how the sequence of events (the wrecking of the Prestige when several post-Erika measures came into force) legitimised the strategy of the Prodi Commission dedicated to a better management of globalization. Given the insights of Ostrom’s work on Commons governance, coordination and polycentricity, adaptation is the key concept of the proposed analysis. Adaptation is a process by which credible commitments are taken and discrepancies between learning and redistributive activities are minimized. Comparing policy designs at the beginning and at the end of the 2000s shows the added value of a regulatory European agency, the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA), for increasing the adaptive capacity of a policy subsystem. During that period, agencification went with the creation of sophisticated monitoring tools, a more systematic use of evidences in the enforcement of European law, and generally speaking the strengthening of Member States’ implementation capabilities. In this transnational regulatory network, coordination results from sharing and discussing expertise.

Ce mémoire ré-explore la thèse de la centralisation du pouvoir aux niveaux supranational (UE) et national (Allemagne) lors de la crise des migrants de 2015. Cette thèse est largement étudiée et reconnue dans le domaine de la gestion des crises et prend place soit par une approche descendante - les niveaux supérieurs agissent unilatéralement - ou par une approche ascendante - les niveaux inférieurs délèguent aux rangs supérieurs. Au cours de la crise des migrants de 2015, il est attendu que la centralisation aux niveaux national et supranational prenne place avec l’intensification de la crise et par une approche descendante. Le document examine la crise de manière quantitative et présente une analyse de contenu chronologique de 94 déclarations officielles de la Commission Européenne et du gouvernement allemand. Les résultats obtenus confirment la validité de la thèse de la centralisation du pouvoir, son lien à l’intensification de la crise ainsi qu’une approche ascendante. / This research paper assesses the well-known centralization-of-power thesis and analyses it at both the supranational level (European Union) and the national level (Germany) during the 2015 migrant crisis. The centralization-of-power thesis is a widely studied and recognized phenomenon in the field of crisis management building on the subsidiarity principle saying that power tends to be centralized in the hands of the highest ranks of a hierarchy when lower ranks are unable to cope with a crisis. The centralization can either take place through a top-down approach – highest ranks take the lead unilaterally – or a bottom-up approach – lowest ranks deliberately delegate power to the higher ranks. According to this thesis, in the case of the 2015 migrant crisis it is expected that the centralization of power happened at both the national and supranational levels as the context aggravated but also through a top-down approach, due to the complex context of the European Union and the highly decentralized structure of German federalism. The paper first examines the 2015 migrant crisis from a quantitative standpoint, tracing its evolution and aggravation. It also presents a computer-assisted content analysis of 94 official statements issued by the European Commission and the German Federal Government’s officials in response to the 2015 migrant crisis. The paper then provides a detailed analysis of the qualitative and quantitative evidence recovered that led to three main conclusions. Firstly, the centralization of power is observed at both the supranational and national levels during the 2015 migrant crisis, but in significantly different ways. Secondly, the centralization of power can be seen as triggered by the aggravation of the context and to the intensification of the crisis. Lastly, it was put into place as a top-down approach; it was German and European’s high officials that took over the crisis management effort and constrained lower levels of government to act accordingly.

Le présent mémoire consiste à analyser la politique étrangère est-européenne de la Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière (SFIO) par l'entremise des conceptions idéologiques de Léon Blum entre 1919, date à laquelle il est élu député du parti en Chambre, et 1936, date à laquelle il accède au poste de président du Conseil. Notre objectif consiste à démontrer que l'idéologie socialiste ne s'affirma pas pendant toute la période comme étant la base argumentative exclusive des prises de position blumistes sur les moyens d'assurer le maintien de la pacification européenne et que, lorsqu'il y eut des écarts entre celle-ci et les propositions concrètes que fit Blum, il les justifia systématiquement en invoquant la prééminence nécessaire de la cause de la paix sur les dogmes idéologiques. Nous désirons également attester que la doctrine socialiste, telle que définie par Blum et en tant que cadre analytique prédominant, ne constitua pas un outil favorisant la compréhension des implications, sur l'Europe de l'Est, des problèmes d'entre-deux-guerres. Elle attenta donc sérieusement à la pertinence des propositions blumistes visant à éradiquer ces litiges déterminants pour l'avenir du 'Vieux Continent'. / Québec Université Laval, Bibliothèque 2014

In the 90´s, Europe used to be depicted as the most privileged political arena for regional nationalist political parties to access for “more” political power. In that sense, whereas formal channels of regional interest representation were taken for granted by those standing within federal political systems; informal channels of regional interest representation were highly valued by regional nationalists standing in decentralized or devolutionary constitutional settlements. In spite of nuanced institutional preferences, Europe was rationally inspired (Ostrom 2005) as it used to be perceived as an aggregation of formal-legal structures that could be used as a means to prescribe, proscribe and permit a certain behavior in exchange of a personal utility. Moreover, regional nationalists were policy “maximizers” who acted in isolation, away from the center, using their own limited political resources to maximize their policy gains by pursuing distinctive forms of political autonomy. However, by the end of the 90’s, both categories of regional nationalists plunged into European disillusion due to the limits of a sovereign logic prevailing in Europe.<p>However, in the 21st century, as soon as a new European policy cycle started to emerge and the economic crisis started to cripple, experienced regional nationalists realized that they could use the benefits of regional economic resources in face of the European Economic strategy to justify further concessions of policy competences that are still shared, either in theory or in practice, as well as to argue for new ones. The political plan would consist of using the reference of the European Economic targets to deliver policies, which would allow them to legitimize their nationalist aspirations, in both layers of governance, as well as to induce regional citizens into their political plan so they can finally reach the legal threshold to endorse a new state reform. Moreover, since they were rationally bounded, in the sense that they were lacking the policy expertise to perform these goals, they have learned to rely on a policy narrative (Shabahan et al 2011; Jones and Beth 2010; Radaelli 2010) embedded in a territorial economic argument to make sense of an advocacy coalition framework (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1993), using informal channels of regional interest intermediation as “cognitive” structures (Scot 1995a) to articulate a policy strategy to be implemented in Europe and at the regional level of governance. <p>Therefore, and irrespectively of nuanced constitutional settlements, all experienced regional nationalists have returned to the center, using informal channels as an instrument of governance (Salamon 2002) to clarify the best policy options to be implemented in both layers of governance. In other words, regional nationalists have become “policy satisficers” (Simon 1954) who have learned to forgo immediate satisfaction in Europe to collect major gains of political power across multiple layers of governance. If the term “usage” can be defined as the act of using something to achieve certain political goals (Jacquot and Wolf 2003), in this research, we will apply the concept of “usage” to demonstrate that experienced regional nationalists in government have moved from a rational to a cognitive “usage” of the European institutions to perform renewed political preferences across multiple layers of governance. <p>Departing from an actor centered institutionalist approach (Mayntz and Sharp 1997), we will demonstrate that the N-VA in Flanders, since 2004, and the SNP in Scotland, since 2007, have become new pragmatic nationalists. In that sense, we will argue that, in a clear contrast with pragmatic nationalists of the 90’s who expected to legitimize their nationalist aspirations in Europe by the means of a rational “usage” of the European institutions; experienced regional nationalists have become new pragmatic nationalists as they have learned to rely on a cognitive “usage” of the European institutions to legitimize their nationalist aspirations, no longer in Europe, but through Europe. <p>We will then conclude that in the 21st century, and against traditional dogmas of the 90’s, the “usage” of Europe by regional nationalists is cognitively twisted, economically driven and collectively performed. It embraces all experienced regional nationalist political parties in government, irrespectively of their constitutional settlement or nationalist credo, as long as they possess the ability to anchor a political strategy embedded in “identity” without sticking to strict politics of nationalism. <p> / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The dissertation deals with the conflict over the EU Services Directive which is also known as the Bolkestein Directive. The general liberalisation and deregulation of the services markets in the EU has known the greatest politicisation of an EU issue ever seen in the history of European politics. It mobilised a wide range of political actors, including unions, diverse associations and citizen groups in several member states of the EU as well as in Brussels. The Commissioner for the internal market Frits Bolkestein and the directive proposal adopted in January 2004 have come to epitomize the neoliberal face of European integration. Due to its connection with the Eastern enlargement in May 2004 and with the ratification of the European constitutional treaty in France and The Netherlands in 2005, the directive proposal on services liberalization triggered a general debate over the economic and social nature of the EU polity far beyond a mere matter of public policy. After three years of debate and mobilization, the directive proposal was substantially amended in the European Parliament and clear limitations were put to liberalization of the services of general interest and to market deregulation.<p>\ / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Doctorat en sciences sociales, politiques et économiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Doctorat en sciences sociales, politiques et économiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished