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This research project seeks to gauge the autonomous power of the European Commission within the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), a new mode of governance coined at the Lisbon European Council in March 2000 and based on the principle of the voluntary cooperation of Member States. Two cases form the basis of this inquiry, namely, quality in work, a policy issue addressed under the banner of the European Employment Strategy, and child poverty and social exclusion, a key item on the agenda of the OMC for Social Inclusion. A primary impetus at the heart of this project is one of ontological pluralism. Rejecting a zero-sum interpretation of the rationalist/constructivist debate, this study constitutes a plea for a conversation across paradigms. The domain-of-application model employed here works by preserving the integrity of individual theories while specifying a particular scope condition under which constructivist and rationalist insights are likely to prevail. Selecting two cases on the basis of the critical scope condition of issue sensitivity, a central postulate informing this integrative research design is that high issue sensitivity (quality in work) invites strategic interaction among pre-constituted social actors driven by a behavioural logic of utility-maximization, while low issue sensitivity (child poverty and social exclusion) allows for a fundamentally norm-guided behaviour. Concretely, in effecting this theoretical dialogue, two sets of causal hypotheses are examined. On the one hand, rational choice institutionalism (principal-agent theory) offers a number of suppositions about the Commission’s institutional power, that is, its ability to transform the conditions of action of self-seeking national governments. On the other hand, sociological institutionalism conceptualizes the Commission’s productive power (i.e. its power to constitute the interests and identities of individual agents) through the lens of discourse analysis. Testing theoretical predictions against collected data makes plain the superior explanatory value of independent variables and causal mechanisms of rationalist lineage in capturing the essence of the Commission’s autonomous power in the case of quality in work and the congruity of sociological institutionalism’s original conjectures in the area of child poverty and social exclusion. Crucially, this strict correspondence corroborates the pertinence of the critical scope condition of issue sensitivity in delineating the explanatory ambit of both theories and attests to the co-existence of different forms of autonomous power wielded by the Commission within the framework of the OMC.

Montréal est une Métropole où des populations de toutes origines, de tous niveaux de vie et d’éducation cohabitent. En tant qu’acteur de santé publique notre objectif est de faire en sorte que chacun ait droit à l’égalité des chances aussi bien sociales que sanitaires. Dans la Métropole, il est possible d’observer des inégalités dans différents domaines, tels : l’éducation, le travail, le logement, l’alimentation et bien d’autres encore. Ce mémoire est une étude de Cas portant sur le plaidoyer de la Coalition Montréalaise des Tables de Quartier (CMTQ) entre le 1er janvier 2011 et le 1er juin 2016 en faveur de la lutte contre la pauvreté et l’exclusion sociale et ayant pour but d’explorer comment est exercé cedit plaidoyer par les acteurs de la CMTQ. La CMTQ qui est un Organisme à But Non Lucratif (OBNL) positionne la population au centre de ses préoccupations, milite de sorte que Montréal soit une métropole juste et égalitaire et place la pauvreté et l’exclusion sociale dans ces objectifs sur lesquels il est important d’agir pour le bien-être de la communauté. L’Initiative Montréalaise de Soutien au Développement social local (IM) qui est un programme de la Direction de Santé Publique (DSP), de Centraide du Grand Montréal et de la CMTQ, permet d’offrir un soutien financier à des institutions telles que les Tables de concertation locales dans le but d’améliorer la qualité et les conditions de vie des Montréalais. La CMTQ agit en partenariat avec les tables de quartier en travaillant sur des enjeux soulevés par le développement social local, l’amélioration de la qualité et des conditions de vie des citoyens et la lutte contre la pauvreté et l’exclusion sociale. Cette étude a utilisé des données majoritairement qualitatives issues d’analyses de contenus d’entretiens semi-dirigés, de prises de position, de mémoires, d’apparitions dans les médias traditionnels (La Presse) ainsi qu’une analyse de contenus quantitatifs des réseaux sociaux, plus particulièrement Twitter. Les résultats de cette recherche ont permis d’identifier les porte-parole de la CMTQ sur la place publique et mettent en lumière les stratégies et les moyens utilisés par la CMTQ pour exercer leur plaidoyer ainsi que les messages contenus dans ces stratégies et la façon dont les acteurs s’y prennent. / Montreal is a metropolis where people of all origins, socio-economic background and education live. As public health advocates, our goal is to ensure that each person is afforded equal rights to both social opportunities and the benefits which make for a healthy life. In Montreal, it is possible to observe inequalities in areas such as education, work, housing, and food security, amongst many others. This thesis is a case study of CMTQ’s advocacy methods between january 1st 2011 and june 1st 2016 as well as their approach to fighting poverty and social exclusion (in the public debate). In addition this thesis will specifically explores how CMTQ activists apply their methods of advocacy in order to eliminate poverty and social exclusion. The Montreal Coalition of Neighborhood Round Tables (CMTQ) is a Non-Profit Organization (NPO) that places the population at the center of its campaigns and works to ensure that Montreal is a fair and egalitarian city that prioritizes issues of poverty and social exclusion. The Montreal Initiative of Support for Local Social Development (IM), a program of the Montreal Public Health Department (DSP), the Centraide of Greater Montreal and of the CMTQ, provides financial support to institutions such as local round tables with the purpose of improving the quality and living conditions of Montrealers. The CMTQ works in partnership with neighbourhood councils by working on issues raised by local social development and also by working on ways to eradicate poverty and social exclusion in order to better the quality and living conditions of citizens. This study uses primarily qualitative data derived from the analysis of semi-structured interviews, the examination of official positions held by the organizations, thesis publications and discussions in traditional media (The Press), as well as a quantitative content analysis found on social medias especially Twitter. The results of this research permitted the identification of the CMTQ’s advocates and also shed light on the strategies and tools used by the CMTQ as well as the contents of theses strategies and message and the way activists apply these tools.

This thesis is a case study with a goal to comprehensively map and depict the evolution of the so- called non-supplement zones. This name is an abbreviated term that is used in media for the general provision authorizing establishing of areas of higher incidence of socially undesirable phenomena, where housing supplements are not to be payed to any new applicants. Bohemian and Moravian municipalities can make use of this measure since 2017. Thus they aim to fight the poverty industry and the problems connected with it. Additionally, a Constitutional Court decision on the appeal on this measure made by a group of senators is awaited since 2017. In this thesis, the problematique is viewed both on policy and politics level, both on national and local level, using the theory of the policy process, agenda setting, and the multiple streams theory. Under examination are also the levels of discourses and framing of the problem. To demonstrate a local context, there was chosen the case of the Kladno municipality, which holds a specific position in the context since it is the first city in the Czech Republic that decided to declare this general provision on its entire territory. However, later the decision was annulled by the regional administration. The research was based mainly on documents survey, media...