Reconfiguring Post-Pandemic Post-Pandemic Europe; Reform, Resilience, Reorder

Globalisation, transnationalism, European integration, the financial crisis and digitalisation figured as historical challenges to European society and politics in the first decades of the twenty-first century. The last one-and-half years of the Covid-19 pandemic and the accompanying political, economic, social, cultural, and moral transformations, however, have once again shook up our very basic understanding concerning rights and liberties, power, trust, stability, security, and solidarity, and posit an unprecedented, extraordinary challenge. The uniqueness of the Covid-19 crisis as well as the ongoing challenges of the 21st century require political sociologists to reflect upon the very changing dynamics between politics and society, state and democracy, citizens, scientific authorities and political elites; between the national state, supra-/transnational institutions and the international sphere. Dynamics that we have witnessed in the past year(s), that have prompted demands for reform, resilience and reorder, and whose consequences are just about to be revealed. In response, this section is interested in addressing the political and social challenges that a post-pandemic Europe is about to face by asking, e.g.: What are the effects of the crisis on fundamental rights and liberties, on civil society mobilization, on political action of citizenry? What are the answers of post-pandemic Europe to the ever-growing social, economic and political inequalities? How did the crisis affect the principles of deliberation, representation and accountability in EU and national policy-making? What are the consequences of the pandemic on local, regional, national and transnational networks of solidarity? These questions will frame the focus of the section, but others may be proposed as well. With our section, we want to signal to the (academic) field that the study of post-pandemic Europe requires a new political sociology, a political sociology that addresses these contemporary challenges, i.e., the demands for reform, resilience and reorder, by developing new questions, applying innovative theoretical frameworks and a variety of methods to grasp the ubiquity of the political, social, and cultural reconfigurations that we currently witness. Hence, we invite contributions that might range over a large field of theoretical problems related to classic and new(er) concepts of the political sociology. In response to the methodological challenges that we have been facing during the crisis, in particular in conducting qualitative research, we invite contributions that present innovative methodological tools and solutions for conducting political sociology research in times of ‘social distancing’ and ‘hard borders’. Finally, the section welcomes empirical research on significant case studies in a comparative perspective. Suggestions for panels: 1. Social and political trust in and after the pandemic 2. Impact of Covid-19 crisis on the practice of (parliamentary) representation and democracy 3. Populist mobilization and sovereigntist claim 4. The Stratification of Resilience: Between National and International Political Order 5. Identities and Identifications: Politicized Uses of Collective Identities in times of Covid-19 6. Multiple crises and the European borders of solidarity 7. Physical Distancing as a specific challenge for research in the field of political sociology 8. Young people’s politics between Covid19-pandemic and Climate Crisis