In person icon The Democratic Legitimacy of the EU's Industrial Policy Turn?

Abstract

In the last few years, there has been a growing body of research on the EU's industrial policy and geopolitical turn. Scholars have analysed in depth the international relations and domestic power bloc realignments making possible this turn, the novel power and competence settlements between the EU Commission and member states, as well as the concrete ways in which new industrial policy instruments are being deployed and contested. What the literature remains silent about though is the democratic legitimacy (if any) of the EU's new industrial policy instruments. In the otherwise lively debates around competing state capitalisms, geopolitical and security imperatives or, carrots and sticks for companies, there are multiple legitimacy-relevant questions that remain unanswered, including: What is the public support in the EU for vertical industrial policy? How does public support for vertical industrial policy differ between EU member states? To what extent is the public interest taken into account when designing the conditionality of novel industrial policy instruments? Who is consulted when important trade-offs between competitiveness and sustainability are being made? This panel addresses this gap in the literature and explores the legitimacy of EU's industrial policy using different methodological approaches, such as narrative analysis, survey experiments, qualitative content analysis, and interviews. In terms of focus, the different papers in the panel explore new industrial policy instruments more generally, as well as specific sectoral policies including microelectronics and the cloud. The papers also cover a wide plethora of actors, analysing opinions, narratives and (non-)interventions of citizens, elected representatives, civil society, and various interest groups throughout the process of designing and implementing policies.

Title	Details
Into the Global Subsidy War: the Determinants of State Subsidies Across OECD Countries	View Paper Details
How Do People Think About Industrial Policy. Evidence from a Survey Experiment	View Paper Details
The Missing Democratic Legitimacy of the EU’s Semiconductor Policy	View Paper Details
Disjointed (De-)politicisation and Multilevel Governance: the Case of Cloud Infrastructure in the EU	View Paper Details
The Renaissance of Japan's Industrial Policy - Japan and the Global "Chip War"	View Paper Details